Caregivers help seeking attitude and pathways of care among persons with bipolar affective disorder

Pages: 158-164
Priyanka Devi S. and Gobinda Majhi (Department of Psychiatric Social Work, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, Karnataka)

Belief patterns significantly influence the help-seeking behavior, and lack of proper knowledge would promote unscientific treatment. Consequently, caregivers delay in approaching medical services, which affects the prognosis. The aims of the present study as follows: (i.) to examine caregivers’ help-seeking behavior and care pathway of persons with bipolar affective disorder. And (ii) to explore the duration to reach and access the tertiary care psychiatric services. This is a cross-sectional, descriptive study recruited 60 primary caregivers of people with bipolar affective disorder by a purposive sampling technique. Socio-demographic variables and pathways to care instrument were used to collect the data. The majority (76.7%) caregivers perceived that community feels it a disgrace to interact with persons with mental illnesses or maintains a social distancing (80.1%). Fifty percent felt it can damage their reputation. Belief in witchcraft (56.7%), preference for contacting religious healers (43.33%), and priests (16.66 %) were widely prevalent. Mean duration to reach the tertiary care hospital was 80.10 months (SD 6.459). Asize able portion of caregivers still prefer traditional healing over professional health care as their first-line treatment of choice. Reasons are, easy access to the traditional healers, lack of awareness about the scientific treatment, religious and cultural influence of that is still prevailing in the community