Mental healthcare-seeking behavior of women in Bangladesh: content analysis of a social media platform

BMC Psychiatry

Research

M. Tasdik Hasan¹  Zarin Tasnim²  Sabrina Choudhury³  Sharmin Ahmed³  Faria Tasnim Farin⁴  Mir Nabila Ashraf⁵  Rudbar Mahmood⁵  Ibidunni Oloniniyi⁶  Kamrun Nahar Koly⁷  Jobaida Saba⁸  Daniel D. Reidpath⁹  Rifath Binta Modasser^1,10 

[1] Action Lab, Department of Human Centred Computing, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia;Department of Public Health, State University of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Department of Primary Care & Mental Health, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK;BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, 1213, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Department of Epidemiology, National Institute of Preventive and Social Medicine (NIPSOM), 1212, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA;Department of Public Health, North South University, 1229, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Departmental of Mental Health, Faculty of Clinical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria;Mental Health Unit, Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex, Ile-Ife, Osun, Nigeria;Health System and Population Studies Division, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), Dhaka, Bangladesh;Health System and Population Studies Division, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), Dhaka, Bangladesh;Department of Public Health and Informatics, Jahangirnagar University, 1342, Dhaka, Bangladesh;Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University, Subang Jaya, Malaysia;School of Public Health, Independent University Bangladesh (IUB), Bashundhara, 1229, Dhaka, Bangladesh;

关键词: Healthcare-seeking behavior;    Mental health;    Barriers;    Women;    Bangladesh;    Social media;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12888-022-04414-z

 received in 2022-07-16, accepted in 2022-11-23,  发布年份 2022

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMental health remains a highly stigmatized area of healthcare, and people often conceal their concerns rather than seek assistance or treatment. The Women Support Initiative Forum (WSIF) is a social media platform established in 2018 to provide expert and peer-led psychosocial support services to women of all ages in Bangladesh. The anonymous nature of the forum means that mental health concerns can be aired without fear of identification.MethodA content analysis was conducted on the anonymous posts retrieved from the WSIF platform between 8th March 2020 and 7th July 2022. Around 1457 posts were initially selected for analysis which was reduced to 1006 after removing duplicates and non-relevant posts, such as queries about the addresses of the doctors and other non-mental health-related issues. A thematic analysis of the data was conducted using an inductive approach.ResultThe 1006 posts generated four themes and nine sub-themes. All the women mentioned mental health symptoms (n = 1006; 100%). Most also mentioned reasons for seeking mental healthcare (n = 818; 81.31%), healthcare-seeking behavior (n = 667; 66.30%), and barriers to seeking mental healthcare (n = 552; 54.87%). The majority of women described symptoms of stress, depression, and anxiety-like symptoms, which were aggregated under common mental health conditions. Mental health symptoms were ascribed to various external influences, including marital relationship, intrafamilial abuse, and insecurities related to the COVID-19 pandemic. A large proportion of posts were related to women seeking information about mental healthcare services and service providers (psychologists or psychiatrists). The analysis found that most women did not obtain mental healthcare services despite their externalized mental health symptoms. The posts identified clear barriers to women accessing mental health services, including low mental health literacy, the stigma associated with mental healthcare-seeking behavior, and the poor availability of mental health care services.ConclusionThe study revealed that raising mass awareness and designing culturally acceptable evidence-based interventions with multisectoral collaborations are crucial to ensuring better mental healthcare coverage for women in Bangladesh.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2022

【 图 表 】

Fig. 1