EFFECTIVENESS OF CHILD AND ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION ON KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES OF NURSES IN THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE HOSPITAL IBADAN

Abstract

There is a dearth of information on knowledge and the attitudes of the health care service provider regarding mental health issues. The objectives of this research work was to determine the knowledge and attitudes of nurses in the pediatric wards of the University College Hospital, Ibadan in the recognition, assessment and management of children with mental health disorders and to determine the effect of a training intervention on the knowledge, and attitudes of these nurses with regards to child and adolescent mental health. This was an intervention study. One hundred and forty-six (146) nurses were interviewed in all, 68 from the intervention arm and 78 from the control arm. They were interviewed at baseline and post-intervention. At baseline, all participants were administered with a sociodemographic questionnaire. The modified Knowledge and Attitude towards child & adolescent disorders scale and Mental Health Gap Action Training programme (mhGap) Developmental & Behavioral disorders module questions were used to assess the knowledge and attitudes of respondents towards child and adolescent mental health disorders. Participants were block-randomized into either the intervention group or the control group based on their wards. Participants in the intervention group received a day training session on child and adolescent mental health and were interviewed post-intervention. Chi-square analysis was used for the analysis of all the categorical variables and t-test in the comparison of two means. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare baseline versus post-intervention categorical data within the same group. Levels of significance were set at 0.05, 95% confidence interval. All data analyses were by the SPSS (17.0). Results show that the mean age of the respondents was 40.7 ±7.7 years, 144 (98.6%) were females, 120 (82.2%) were Christians and 134 (91.2%) were married. Post-intervention, there were significant changes in quite a number of the responses. Some of them were reduction in the proportion of respondents who reported that mental illness is rare in children & adolescents, Z = 5.5, p < 0.001 and the proportion of respondents who believed that the root cause of mental disorders in children was a curse on the family, Z = 5.5, P = 0.001, but an increase in the proportion of respondents who reported that imbecility and moron are types of mental disorder found in children, Z = 3.6, p < 0.001, the proportion of respondents who recognized that 20% of children would develop a mental disorder in the course of their lifetime, Z = 4.7, P = 0.001.

There was also a significant difference in the mean post-knowledge score between the intervention group (95.4 ±15.3) and the control group (80.1± 14.6), t = 8.3, p < 0.001. In conclusion, nurses have poor knowledge about the etiology, symptoms and treatment of mental and behavioral disorders in children. However, a one-day health education training intervention brought about significant positive changes in some of their original knowledge and attitude. It is thereby recommended that such training intervention should be carried out at regular intervals to reinforce these positive changes.