Care Seeking and Beliefs About the Cause of Mental Illness Among Nigerian Psychiatric Patients and Their Families

Objective: This study examined treatment seeking by 219 psychiatric patients at a teaching hospital in Kano, Nigeria. Methods: Patients or their families were interviewed about the types of mental health healers that patients saw before seeking conventional psychiatric treatment and beliefs about the causes of the illness. Results: The length of illness before the psychiatric consultation was 4.5 years, and 99 (45%) respondents reported that patients had previously sought religious healing. A majority of respondents (N=128, 59%) attributed the illness to supernatural forces. Up to 68% and 75% of respondents who believed in a medical or genetic cause of illness, respectively, reported seeking a psychiatric consultation within six months of onset, and about 70% who believed in supernatural forces reported seeking psychiatric consultation five years after onset or later (p<.05). Conclusions: Mental health planners should educate alternative mental health healers and integrate them in the care of mental illness. (Psychiatric Services 63:616-618, 2012; doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201000343)