Research Report: Mental Health Awareness, where do we stand?

Introduction:

Mental health illness has always been a taboo topic in Pakistan. For poor it’s a luxury, for illiterates it’s nothing more than a person jinx and for many only religion can treat this illness.

In order to check our secondary research we conducted this small online survey to find out how people from different demographics react to this topic.

Report:

The survey consisted of general knowledge statements with options of agree, disagree and not sure in order to check how much people are aware of mental health in Pakistan. We gathered approx 81 responses by posting the link on our Facebook page ‘Umeed’ which has currently 260 followers.

• We received 69.1% of the responses from females and received 30.9% contribution from males.

• The majority of responses we received were from the people of age group 20-29 years.

The questions included in the survey were: (all questions were followed by options of agree, disagree and not sure)

1. Females are more likely to have mental health illness then men

2. Once you have a mental illness, you have it for life

3. People should work out their own mental health problems

4. Medication is the best treatment for mental illness

5. People with mental health illness are generally violent and dangerous

6. Adults are more likely to have a mental illness

7. You can tell by looking at someone whether they have a mental illness

8. People with mental illness are generally shy and quiet

9. Mental illness can happen to anybody

10. You would be willing to have a person at your work or school with a mental illness

11. You would be happy to have a person with a mental illness become a close friend

Results:

The results gathered and analyzed showed that about 85% of people are aware of basic information regarding mental health in Pakistan. This finding was contrary to our secondary research which stated that majority people in Pakistan do not even have the general knowledge regarding mental health. We looked in depth and find out that majority of people who filled our survey were of age 20-29 and almost all are university students. These finding explained that only the literate segment of society is aware of basic mental health knowledge and for less educated people it might still be a luxury.

We compared the responses of age group 20-29 with the responses of age group 39-49, and found out that this age group also lack mental health awareness.

To conclude this report we can expect the next generation to be more aware of mental health and only education and exposure can help illiterate people understand the seriousness of mental health.