A research thesis to be submitted to the department of Psychiatry, college of puplic health and medical sciences, jimma University, in partial fulfilment of the requirments for the Degree of master of science in integrated clinical and Community mental health

Abstract

Background: Mental distress is a syndrome of mental disturbance manifested by behavioral, psychological, and physiological reactions to a significant stressor. Objective: To assess the prevalence of mental distress and associated factors among health professionals working in JUTH, south west Ethiopia. Method: This study was conducted using a cross-sectional study design. All health professionals were involved in this study from various disciplines. Self-report questionnaire (SRQ-20) was used to detect mental distress. Other structured questionnaire related to socio-demographic characteristics, burnout, working area condition, and substance use habit were used to collect data. Data were entered into SPSS version 16 and analyzed by using default (enter method). Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify the independent predictors of mental distress. In the final model, all variables with P-value <0.05 were declared to be significantly associated with mental distress. Result: Out of the total participants (334), 29.9% (n=100) of them found to have mental distress. Prevalence of mental distress among women and men was similar (31.8% and 29.4% respectively). Mental distress was 4.47 times higher among participants with high burnout score (AOR=4.47, 95%CI=2.37-8.44). Additionally, the likelihood of developing mental distress among physically and verbally abused staffs was 2.34 times higher than their counterparts. Also it was more than two times higher among health professionals reported poor prospect of promotion than those who reported good prospect of promotion. Conclusion: High prevalence of mental distress was found among health professionals. Identified association of mental distress with work related factors needs for immediate and farreaching interventions in promoting health professionals by incentives, trainings and educational opportunities. JUTH also shall to work hard in prevention of burnout among these staffs and in preventing them from any kind of physical or verbal violence by implementing rules and regulations.