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
