Psychosocial Factors Influencing the Wellbeing of Persons Living with Mental Illness in Abeokuta North Local Government Area of Ogun State, Nigeria

Background: Mental illnesses are generally characterized by a combination of abnormal thoughts, perceptions, emotions, behaviour, and relationships with others. Persons with mental illness often experience both psychological and social issues in different areas and are stigmatized in many countries and cultures. The shame and fear associated with mental illness remain substantial obstacles to help seeking, to diagnosis, and to treat worldwide. Aims: The purpose of the study was to examine the psychosocial factors influencing the wellbeing of people living with mental illness in Abeokuta North Local Government, Ogun State Nigeria. Methods: The study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design and stratified and proportional simple random sample was used to select 400 respondents. The study used a self-developed questionnaire tagged “Psychosocial Mental Illness Scale†with reliability test score of 0.76. The demographic characteristics and research questions were analyzed using the descriptive statistics of simple percentage and frequency distribution while Pearson product correlation was used to analyze the research hypotheses at p=0.00. Results: The results revealed that there is a significant influence of low self-esteem on wellbeing of persons living with mental illness (r = 0.611, n=400, p(0.01)