Perception of Clergymen on the Care and Stigmatization of Persons with Mental Illness in Nigeria

Objectives: This study was designed to investigate clergymen's training, knowledge, perception and experience of mental illness.

Methods: The study adopted both quantitative and qualitative study designs conducted among a total of 148 student population of the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary Ogbomoso. The stratified random sampling technique was used for the quantitative approach using the (Community Attitudes towards Mental Illness (CAMI) scale and the socio-demographic questionnaire while purposive sampling of the respondents was used for the qualitative approach. Data collated for the quantitative technique was analyzed using the Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.

Results: The Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) and Key Informant Interviews (KII) respondents believe that all mental illnesses are traceable directly or indirectly to spiritual factors, that certain sociocultural discriminations exist and that the local church is a healing community. The Community Attitudes towards Mental Illness (CAMI) benevolence subscale reveals that 76.4% of them want tax money to be spent on treating mental illness although 57.4% view mental hospitals as prisons. The Social restrictiveness subscale showed that 46.6% did not agree to engage women with a previous history of mental illness as babysitters and 37.2% did not agree to have them as neighbours. On the community mental health ideology subscale; about 70.3% have them live in neighbourhoods although 82.4% of them feel the mentally ill are awkward.

Conclusions: With improved mental health knowledge; the Baptist clergymen may ensure referral to orthodox medical services, encourage compliance and banish discrimination against the mentally ill crucial for the WHO scale up program in Nigeria.