Psycho-social challenges of families of person with mental illness: The case of amanuel mental specialized hospital

Abstract

This study was geared towards the exploration of the psychosocial challenges of families of person with mental illness are facing. The study undertook in Amanuel Mental Specialized Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, a seat of head quarter of AU(Africa Union), is the capital city of Ethiopia. An exploratory and descriptive institutional based cross sectional study was conducted from April 2018 to October 2018. A Mixed Concurrent Triangulation Method with the aim of producing a richer and more complete report was employed. By using availability sampling technique, a total number of 78 families of person with mental illness were used as the sample of the study. Among 78, 70 and 8 were for survey questionnaire and FGD, respectively. The quantitative data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics frequency, percentage/proportion, percentile rank(PR), mean and standard deviation because the data are ordinal and nominal (categorical). On the other hand, qualitative data was analyzed through descriptive analysis and thematic analysis. The findings from both qualitative and quantitative data witnessed that the families of person with mental illness are loaded down and threatened by various psychosocial challenges like blame, feeling of shame, frustrations, fear, being upset- anger, feeling of bad, self-insult, insult, losing respect, embarrassment, worry, loneliness, despairing(hopelessness), being insulted secretly “Beashemure Mesedebe”, isolation, and stigma and discrimination in social organizations like housing, ‘Ekub’, ‘Idir’. In the light of these findings, further research with large sample and multiple research methods are recommended.