Determinants of Stigmatization of Families of Psychiatric Patients: The Case of Butajira District
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Date
2008-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Considerable research has documented the stigmatization of people with mental illnesses
and its negative consequences. Recently it has been shown that stigma may also seriously
affect families and caregivers of psychiatric patients, but a few empirical researches have
addressed this problem. In this study we examine the determinants of stigmatization of
families of psychiatric patients 111 Butajira district. A total of 514 caregivers' of
individuals who were diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia and major affective
disorders in a community based survey were interviewed. The result reveals that 66.1 %
of the fami lies of the psychiatric patients have reported that they are stigmatized due to
the presence of psychiatric patient in the family. Statistical methods such as logistic
regression, factor analysis and alternating logistic regression were applied and results
fi'om logistic regression reveals that sex of patient, age of the informant, quality of
subjects' cun'ent dwelling, economic position of patients' house-hold relative to
catchments ' area, and type of disease are significant factors that determine the
stigmatization of families, and results from factor analysis provides us the two major
components of stigma (threat from extemal environment and self feeling) explaining
64.72% of total variance in all variables and finally alternating logistic regression was
used that provide odds ratio as a measure of association between these two factors.
Perceiving stigmatization with respect to self feeling are 4.338 times that of with respect
to threat from external environment.
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Keywords
Determinants of Stigmatization of Families