Meskerem Mekonnen, Berhanu Boru, Zegeye Yohannis, Dessie Abebaw and Addis Birhanu
Background: Schizophrenia is a brain disorder which affects the way a person acts, thinks, and sees the world and causes difficulties in socializing with others creates a feeling of inability or inadequacy. Social support has an impact on mental and physical health throughout the life span. Lower social support has been associated with poor treatment outcomes. Poor social function has been found to increase admission rates.but in this study setting there is no evidence which shows the level of perceived social support and associated factors among people with schizophrenia.
Objective: The aim of this study is to assess Level of perceived social support and associated factors among peoples with Schizophrenia at Amanuel mental specialized hospital, Addis Ababa, 2017.
Method: An institutional based cross sectional study was conducted from May -to June -2017. Systematic random sampling technique was used to select study participants. Structured questionnaire with systematic random sampling approach followed by face to face interview technique were used. Epic-info version 7 and SPSS version 20 software were used for data entry and analysis respectively. Descriptive statistics were employed to describe the data. Data were fitted with bivariate and multivariate Ordinal logistic regression. Statistical significance were declared 95% confidence interval and P value <0.05.
Results: A total of 410 study participants were participated. The study showed that; low perceived social support, medium perceived social support and high perceived social support account for 21.5%, 58.5% and 20% respectively. Poor medication adherence (AOR=3.61(95% CI; 2.10, 6.18), greater than 3 hospital admission (AOR=0.46(95% CI; 0.27, 0.79), primary (AOR=0.45(95%CI; 0.24, 0.82) and secondary level of education (AOR=0.53(95%CI; 0.31, 0.91) were found to be statistically significant associated with the outcome.
Conclusion and Recommendation: This study showed that people with schizophrenia have lower and medium perceived social support. Health care providers should screen all schizophrenic patients for their medication adherence on a regular basis.