Perceived stigma of mental illness: A comparison between two metropolitan cities in India

Abstract

Purpose:An increasing number of comparative studies are conducted on the stigmatization of persons with mental illness, in particular with regard to regional and diachronic variation. So far, there have been no studies comparing stigmatization of persons with mental illness in two different regions of India. Therefore, we examined the differences in perception of stigma attached to mental illnesses in Kolkata and Chennai, with regard to cultural and geographical differences to better understand the roots and origins of this issue.Materials and Methods:Explorative surveys in the context of public attitudes toward people with mental disorders were conducted among conveniently selected members of the general population in Chennai (n = 166) and Kolkata (n = 158) with identical methodology. Link's perceived devaluation-discrimination measure was used. The samples were matched for age, gender, and education.Results:The calculated sum score indicated that respondents from Kolkata had a higher level of perceived discrimination toward persons with mental illness than respondents from Chennai (P = 0.043). Furthermore, regression analysis revealed that lower perceived stigma was associated with stronger religious devotion (P = 0.049) and higher educational attainment (P = 0.001) in both cities.Discussion:The results showed that perceived stigma was higher in Kolkata than in Chennai. The correlation of higher stigma with lower education was in line with the previous research, and interestingly, it was found that higher stigma correlated with weaker religious devotion. Further studies exploring a wider variety of factors may provide us with a better understanding of the roots of perceived stigma in India.

Rural community attitude towards mental healthcare: a mixed-method study in Khurda district of Odisha, India

“…And the qualitative findings showed that there were four major barriers among patients to seek care from mental health care facilities: the rejection of mental illness by patients due to fear of societal stigma, faith on magico-religious healers, lack of availability of mental health services, and poor socioeconomic conditions. A study conducted in India also revealed that factors such as lower education and females are having more of negative attitudes towards mental health care facilities [17,22]. The present study suggested that females are best weakly related to the attitudes; they are slightly more rigid with their views and have more negative attitudes.…”

“…While examining the issues related to the mental health system, it was always found that level of education is the key factor responsible for the attitudes [1]. Low education levels are responsible for gaps in mental health literacy and inadequate knowledge about seeking correct treatment, which could involve not approaching the appropriate mental health care facilities needed [22]. India, with its diverse cultural and ethical systems mixed in recent years with Western approaches of thinking, makes it tough to identify a uniform and exclusive Indian paradigm of mind and mental health [7].…”

Perceived stigmatization and discrimination of people with mental illness: A survey-based study of the general population in five metropolitan cities in India

“…[ 21 22 ] However, stigma toward individuals who have mental illness in Asian countries is often disproportionally higher than that in Western countries. [ 20 48 ] In South and Southeast Asian nations, especially in India, prejudice of mentally ill people being dangerous and aggressive[ 20 23 ] adjunct with factors such as religion and lower education[ 24 ] result in a higher public desire for social distance to affected individuals. In addition to that, the substantial lack of adequate health-care providers coupled with a personal burden and the lack of awareness within the population ultimately leads to a deficient quality of mental health care.…”

Response to “Pretesting and cognitive interviewing are integral parts in translation of survey instrument”

“…Our impression was that during the interview if any issues arose due to some participants being unfamiliar with the context of mental illness, it was helpful that we allowed them to take their time and instructed them that they had the chance to respond to that question later. This procedure may not necessarily be a weakness of the questionnaire and facilitated a higher completion rate.We agree et al .,[12] that in our study we did not fully follow the outlined WHO translation method, especially in terms of cognitive testing. We, thus, acknowledge the suggestion for future studies, given sufficient funding, and accept a potential inadequacy of equivalence as a limitation of our study.…”