PERCEPTION REGARDING MENTAL ILLNESS

Mental health disorders are widely recognized as a major contributor to the global burden of disease worldwide. The community showed lack of knowledge concerning mental illness, inability to identify types and had negative views regarding mental illness. Grounded theory research design was used to assess the perception regarding mental illness. It clearly states that mental illness is still not well understood, often disregarded and considered as a taboo. 12 participants were selected by simple random sampling. Data was collected by in-depth interview and open ended questionnaire. Findings of the study revealed that there are various factors which affect mental health, it consist of six major themes - Mental illness is different from other disease, Caused by accident and shock, Cured by seeking medical advice, Having friends puts a positive impact on mentally ill person, Mentally ill people should not get married and do job, Mentally ill person is burden and disturbs family atmosphere. The present study concluded that, mental illness are the behavioral or intellectual health disorder that distort a individual emotion, reasoning, enduring capability and periodic operation thus declining one's capacity for coping with ordinary demands of life. Various activities have been associated to mental illness such people exhibit unusual pattern of behavior such as they show excessive temper tantrum, hurt other people in the society, speaks loudly and irrelevantly, usually repeats one task several time, becomes violent which as a result develop burden over the family member and they felt difficult to manage them.