IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socpsy/v60y2014i5p454-461.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health service utilization by patients with common mental disorder identified by the Self-Reporting Questionnaire in a primary care setting in Zomba, Malawi: A descriptive study

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Udedi
  • Leslie Swartz
  • Robert C Stewart
  • Felix Kauye

Abstract

Background: There has been no study carried out to assess health service utilization by people with common mental disorder (CMD) in Malawi. Aim: The aim of the study was to evaluate health service utilization patterns of patients with CMD in primary health care (PHC) clinics. Methods: The study was conducted in two PHC clinics in one of the 28 districts in Malawi. Face-to-face interviews with the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) were conducted in a sample of 323 PHC attendees aged 18 years and older who attended the PHC clinics for any reason. Results: The prevalence of probable CMD in the sample was 20.1%. People with probable CMD had a higher mean number of health facility visits in the previous three months compared to those without probable CMD (1.6 vs 1.19, p = .02). Conclusion: The study reveals high utilization of health services for people with CMD in the PHC setting. There is a need for PHC workers to improve skills in diagnosing patients with CMD to make PHC services more effective by reducing re-attendance and improving patient outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Udedi & Leslie Swartz & Robert C Stewart & Felix Kauye, 2014. "Health service utilization by patients with common mental disorder identified by the Self-Reporting Questionnaire in a primary care setting in Zomba, Malawi: A descriptive study," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 60(5), pages 454-461, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:60:y:2014:i:5:p:454-461
    DOI: 10.1177/0020764013495527
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020764013495527
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0020764013495527?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jerome Wright & Chikayiko Chiwandira, 2016. "Building capacity for community mental health care in rural Malawi: Findings from a district-wide task-sharing intervention with village-based health workers," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 62(6), pages 589-596, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:60:y:2014:i:5:p:454-461. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.