Adugna Mogasa, Miheret Tesfu and Nigatu Addisu Bekele
Background: Around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions, placing mental disorders among the leading causes of ill-health and disability globally. The burden of mental disorders continues to grow with significant impacts on health and major social, human rights, and economic consequences in all countries of the world. Adherence to treatment has a big influence on achieving clinical remission.
Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted from January to June 2019 at psychiatric OPD unit of Dilla University Referral Hospital. Data were entered into SPSS version 20.0 for windows. It was checked for its completeness, cleaned, processed and analyzed accordingly. A 95% CI and P-value of 0.05 was considered statically significant. Multivariate analysis was used to identify factors associated with medication adherence among patients with mental illness at DURH.
Results: The adherence level in this study was 34.21%. Of 266 study participants, 194 (72.93%) received social support from their families. 21.43% of respondents use at least one type of social drug. The educational status of the patient, drug side effects and use of social drugs affect the adherence level.
Conclusion: The adherence to medications for mental illness was unacceptably in the present study, which needs urgent and coordinated intervention. Illiteracy, drug side effect, and social drug use were independent determinants of nonadherence.
