Exploring barriers to accessing mental health care services in Ndola, Zambia

Mugala, L, Karonga, T, Kalungwe, M, Job, A, Simwanza, NR, Mwale, C, Munyoro, KT, Zimba, V and Nyashanu, M ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9231-0393, 2024. Exploring barriers to accessing mental health care services in Ndola, Zambia. Discover Public Health, 21: 221. ISSN 3005-0774

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Abstract

Objectives: The objectives of the study were to identify barriers that impede access to mental health services and formulate informed targeted interventions and policies to enhance service delivery and utilization.

Data description: A qualitative study was conducted employing a descriptive phenomenological approach to explore the economic, social, cultural and religious barriers to accessing mental health (MH) services. The population of the study constituted family members and care givers of MH patients who resided in Ndola. Purposive sampling technique was used to recruit forty (40) participants who received informed consent forms to give them the right to participate in the study or withdraw from the study at any given time. Semi-structured interviews were utilized to explore views, experiences, beliefs and motivations of study participants and data was analyzed thematically.

The study revealed that barriers to accessing MH services in Ndola included lack of finance, stigma, cultural myths, religious beliefs, social isolation and family breakdown. Therefore, there is need to adopt deliberate comprehensive MH care policies, which include increasing budgetary allocation of resources for procurement of essential MH drugs and implementing a coordinated response to MH care service provision.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Discover Public Health
Creators:	Mugala, L., Karonga, T., Kalungwe, M., Job, A., Simwanza, N.R., Mwale, C., Munyoro, K.T., Zimba, V. and Nyashanu, M.
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date:	4 December 2024
Volume:	21
ISSN:	3005-0774
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s12982-024-00348-x DOI 2313833 Other
Rights:	© the author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	05 Dec 2024 17:05
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2024 17:05
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52701

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