International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | July 2019 | Vol 6 | Issue 7 Page 2879 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Kandasamy S et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2019 Jul;6(7):2879-2884 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Practices causing time delay in seeking care for mental illness Sunitha Kandasamy 1 , M. Vijayalakshmi 2 *, Abdulrahuman Mohamed Buhari 3 INTRODUCTION The definition of health includes mental health along with its physical and social components. 1 Mental health is the foundation for wellbeing and effective functioning for an individual. Mental illness makes persons vulnerable and makes individuals susceptible to human rights violations. Mental Health is vital for the growth and productivity of every society and for a healthy and happy life. Mental illnesses are responsible for nearly 13% of the global burden of disease. 2 Nearly 80% of people with mental disorders live in low- and middle-income countries, which account for more than 10% of total burden of disease in these countries. 3 According to Global Burden of Disease Report, mental health problems are among the first twenty leading causes of disease burden. 4 The WHO study conducted for the NCMH (National Care of Medical Health), states that at least 6.5 per cent of the Indian population suffers from some form of the ABSTRACT Background: Mental health is the foundation for wellbeing and effective functioning for an individual. When people consult clinicians to determine the cause and treatment for such illness, they may also seek answers to questions that medical science can’t answer. Many patients rely on a religious or traditional framework to help answer these questions that often hinder medical treatment and affect its prognosis. This study aim to estimate the practices adopted by the community for cure of mental illness and estimates the time delay that occurred to initiate medical treatment because of these practices. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among 103 patients and their caretakers undergoing treatment in the Psychiatry Department of a tertiary care hospital using a semi structured questionnaire. The data collected was analyzed for mean and statistical significance between proportions. Results: Among the 103 patients, 54.4% were males and 45.6% females. 54.3% of patients suffered from psychosis and 45.6% from neurotic illness. About 60.1% of the patients had experienced some form of traditional and religious practices for treating their illness before approaching medical treatment causing an average time delay of 2.6 years to initiate regular medical treatment. Conclusions: The high rate of religious and traditional practices followed by the community for psychiatric illness leads to significant time delay in initiating evidence based management of illness resulting in significant reduction in the quality of life of these patients. Hence mental health awareness initiative at community level and strengthening mental health services at primary care level is the need of the hour. Keywords: Mental illness, Time delay, Practices 1 Department of Community Medicine, 3 Department of Psychiatry, Tirunelveli Medical College, Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India 2 Institute of Community Medicine, Madras Medical College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Received: 20 March 2019 Revised: 03 June 2019 Accepted: 08 June 2019 *Correspondence: Dr. M. Vijayalakshmi, E-mail: drvijivijay@yahoo.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20192819