Medicinal Plants Used in Management of Various Mental Illnesses in Goma City, Democratic Republic of Congo

Many mentally ill people in Goma city, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), seek treatment from Traditional Health Practitioners (THPs) that utilize medicinal plants (MPs) in management of various ailments. The study aimed to document the MPs used locally to manage mental illnesses (MIs). An in-depth ethnobotanical survey including 43 respondents selected using snow ball method and interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires was conducted in Goma city, in DRC, from May to September 2021. Voucher specimens were collected from the study area and identified at Makerere University Herbarium (MHU). Data were analyzed using ethnobotanical parameters, frequency index, Rahman’s similarity index (RSI) and non-parametric tests as well as Spearman correlation coefficient. A total of 30 plant species, represented amongst 29 genera and 19 families were reportedly used to treat MIs. Of these 63.33% were reported for anxiety, 36.67% for psychosis and 30% for depression. Most abundant taxa were reported for three families including Asteraceae, Lamiaceae and Solanaceae. Among MPs used in Goma city, the two priority plant species for anxiety were Euphorbia abyssinica and Cleome gynandra L. While, the two priority plant species for depression were Conyza sumatrensis and Emilia coccinea. High similarity (RSI = 77.42%) was observed in the use of common species for MIs between THPs from both Goma and Karisimbi communes. Results prove that local people of Goma city use MPs species against MIs that could be further studied for pharmacological effectiveness and safety.

A 32-Year Systematic Review:Exploring the State of Christian Spirituality and Mental Health Research

This study reviewed scholarly articles on the relationship between Christian spirituality and mental health published in academic journals from 1980 to 2022.The review analyzed findings from 44 studies that likely used various research methods like surveys,interviews,and experiments.The results reveal a consistent link between Christian beliefs,such as faith,hope,and love,and positive mental health outcomes.Most studies focused on the therapeutic effects of Christian spirituality in alleviating mental disturbances and improving well-being.However,the review also identified gaps in the literature,including a lack of research on the relationship between Christian spirituality and mental illness,small sample sizes,and a lack of cross-cultural and cross-religious investigations.The article emphasizes the importance of addressing these limitations to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship between mental health and spirituality.

A Robust Method of Bipolar Mental Illness Detection from Facial Micro Expressions Using Machine Learning Methods

Bipolar disorder is a serious mental condition that may be caused by any kind of stress or emotional upset experienced by the patient.It affects a large percentage of people globally,who fluctuate between depression and mania,or vice versa.A pleasant or unpleasant mood is more than a reflection of a state of mind.Normally,it is a difficult task to analyze through physical examination due to a large patient-psychiatrist ratio,so automated procedures are the best options to diagnose and verify the severity of bipolar.In this research work,facial microexpressions have been used for bipolar detection using the proposed Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)-based model.Facial Action Coding System(FACS)is used to extract micro-expressions called Action Units(AUs)connected with sad,happy,and angry emotions.Experiments have been conducted on a dataset collected from Bahawal Victoria Hospital,Bahawalpur,Pakistan,Using the Patient Health Questionnaire-15(PHQ-15)to infer a patient’s mental state.The experimental results showed a validation accuracy of 98.99%for the proposed CNN modelwhile classification through extracted featuresUsing SupportVectorMachines(SVM),K-NearestNeighbour(KNN),and Decision Tree(DT)obtained 99.9%,98.7%,and 98.9%accuracy,respectively.Overall,the outcomes demonstrated the stated method’s superiority over the current best practices.

Significance of fostering the mental health of patients with diabetes through critical time intervention

BACKGROUND Critical time intervention(CTI)is an evidence-based model of practice that is time-limited and aims to provide support for most susceptible individuals during a transition period.AIM To examine the significance of fostering the mental health of diabetes patients through CTI using the scoping review methodology.METHODS As part of the scoping review process,we followed the guidelines established by the Joanna Briggs Institute.The search databases were Google Scholar,PubMed,Scopus,PsycINFO,Reference Citation Analysis(https://www.referencecitation-analysis.com/),and Cochrane Library.From these databases,77 articles were retrieved with the aid of carefully selected search terms.However,19 studies were selected after two reviewers appraised the full texts to ensure that they are all eligible for inclusion,while 54 papers were excluded.RESULTS This study revealed that diabetic patients who had experienced homelessness were at higher risk of being diagnosed with mental illness and that social support services are impactful in the management of the comorbidity of diabetes and mental health problems.In addition,this review reveals that CTI is impactful in enhancing the mental health of homeless patients during the transitional period from the hospital through social support services.CONCLUSION CTI is a promising intervention for alleviating mental health symptoms in homeless patients.Empirical studies are needed across the globe,involving both hospitalized and community-based patients,to determine how clinically effectively CTI is in managing the mental health of diabetics.

Analysis of the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation for patients with chronic mental illness:A meta-analysis

BACKGROUND People suffering from chronic mental illness are sensitive to stressful stimuli,lack coping skills,and have low self-esteem due to problems such as social situations.They also experience depression,isolation,fear,and frustration.Due to cognitive dysfunction,people suffering from chronic mental illness have inadequate cognitive processes that lead to distorted thinking.AIM To confirm the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation therapy in improving cognitive function and alleviating behavioral and psychological symptoms in patients with chronic mental illness,and to identify the cognitive function that had the main effect.METHODS The quality of the studies was evaluated using the Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews criteria,and data published from 2011 to December 2022 were searched using PubMed,Cochrane,RISS,KISS,and DBpia.The keywords used in the search were“mental illness,”“cognitive rehabilitation,”“cognition,”and“mental.”A meta-analysis was conducted on the 12 selected papers.RESULTS The level of evidence for the 12 documents was that of a randomized experimental study.Intervention types in cognitive rehabilitation can be divided into cognitive behavior,cognitive training,cognitive rehabilitation,and computerized cognitive programs.Most of the studies were on schizophrenia,and the measurement areas were cognitive functions(e.g.,concentration,memory,and executive function)as well as depression,sociability,and quality of life.As a result of the meta-analysis of each variable,the effect size for cognitive rehabilitation treatment was in the following order:Sociability,memory,concentration,executive function,quality of life,and depression.Particularly,sociability and memory exhibited significant effects.CONCLUSION Cognitive rehabilitation aids cognitive function and sociability in patients with chronic mental illness and can be used as evidence for cognitive rehabilitation in mental health and occupational therapy.

Adverse effects of early-life stress:focus on the rodent neuroendocrine system

Early-life stress is associated with a high prevalence of mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorders,attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder,schizophrenia,and anxiety or depressive behavior,which constitute major public health problems.In the early stages of brain development after birth,events such as synaptogenesis,neuron maturation,and glial differentiation occur in a highly orchestrated manner,and external stress can cause adverse long-term effects throughout life.Our body utilizes multifaceted mechanisms,including neuroendocrine and neurotransmitter signaling pathways,to appropriately process external stress.Newborn individuals first exposed to early-life stress deploy neurogenesis as a stress-defense mechanism;however,in adulthood,early-life stress induces apoptosis of mature neurons,activation of immune responses,and reduction of neurotrophic factors,leading to anxiety,depression,and cognitive and memory dysfunction.This process involves the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis and neurotransmitters secreted by the central nervous system,including norepinephrine,dopamine,and serotonin.The rodent early-life stress model is generally used to experimentally assess the effects of stress during neurodevelopment.This paper reviews the use of the early-life stress model and stress response mechanisms of the body and discusses the experimental results regarding how early-life stress mediates stress-related pathways at a high vulnerability of psychiatric disorder in adulthood.

Mental Illness Disorder Diagnosis Using Emotion Variation Detection from Continuous English Speech

Automatic recognition of human emotions in a continuous dialog model remains challenging where a speaker’s utterance includes several sentences that may not always carry a single emotion.Limited work with standalone speech emotion recognition(SER)systems proposed for continuous speech only has been reported.In the recent decade,various effective SER systems have been proposed for discrete speech,i.e.,short speech phrases.It would be more helpful if these systems could also recognize emotions from continuous speech.However,if these systems are applied directly to test emotions from continuous speech,emotion recognition performance would not be similar to that achieved for discrete speech due to the mismatch between training data(from training speech)and testing data(from continuous speech).The problem may possibly be resolved if an existing SER system for discrete speech is enhanced.Thus,in this work the author’s existing effective SER system for multilingual and mixed-lingual discrete speech is enhanced by enriching the cepstral speech feature set with bi-spectral speech features and a unique functional set of Mel frequency cepstral coefficient features derived from a sine filter bank.Data augmentation is applied to combat skewness of the SER system toward certain emotions.Classification using random forest is performed.This enhanced SER system is used to predict emotions from continuous speech with a uniform segmentation method.Due to data scarcity,several audio samples of discrete speech from the SAVEE database that has recordings in a universal language,i.e.,English,are concatenated resulting in multi-emotional speech samples.Anger,fear,sad,and neutral emotions,which are vital during the initial investigation of mentally disordered individuals,are selected to build six categories of multi-emotional samples.Experimental results demonstrate the suitability of the proposed method for recognizing emotions from continuous speech as well as from discrete speech.

Psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals with serious mental disorders: A systematic review of the literature

BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)pandemic is having a great impact on individuals from all over the world,particularly on individuals with mental disorders.Several studies found more pronounced psychiatric symptoms,notably symptoms of depression and anxiety.AIM To assess the situation of patients with serious mental illness(SMI:Affective disorders and schizophrenia)regarding their mental health outcome during the pandemic.METHODS A systematic search using the databases PubMed and MEDLINE was conducted,employing the key words“COVID-19”,“SARS-CoV-2”,“psychiatric/mental disorder/illness”,“affective/mood disorder”,“bipolar disorder”,“(major)depression”,“schizoaffective disorder”,and“schizophrenia”.Studies that had been published up until January 9,2021 were included.Information of studies in languages other than English and German was mostly taken from their English abstracts.RESULTS The literature search concluded in the finding of 36 studies containing relevant clinical data.A general impairment of the mental health of individuals with SMI could be detected,particularly in individuals with affective disorders,as compared to those with schizophrenia.Compared to healthy controls,symptoms of anxiety,depression,and stress were more pronounced in individuals with SMI.Relevant factors found that impacted their mental health were age,resilience,and socioeconomic environment,especially the shortage of mental health services,lack of social support,and inadequate information about COVID-19.CONCLUSION In light of these results,mental health services should be reinforced,notably the use of telemental health services.Furthermore,supplying individuals with SMI with adequate information about the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing their resilience is important.When researching the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals with SMI,standardization as well as follow-up studies are needed to enable better comparability and understanding.

Mental health of perinatal women

Pregnancy and childbirth are major stressors for some women. They can be followed by deterioration in mental health status and cause mental illnesses during perinatal period. Undetected and untreated perinatal mental illnesses can have negative unexpected impacts on parenting skills of the women and children’s development. Mentally ill mothers may not effectively attend their children’s needs in a timely manner and may experience an unfavourable mother-child attachment affecting the child’s language, social, emotional and cognitive development. The rate of pregnancy and postnatal health complications and interventions is higher among mentally ill women with some certain risk factors. The mentally ill mothers along with their partners need comprehensive support and counselling to be able to care for their infants and establish strong parent-child bond and attachment. Mental health campaigns across the world have endeavoured to increase the knowledge and awareness of the public towards perinatal mental health illnesses. To this aim, a routine screening is recommended in order to identify the women who are at risk of mood or anxiety disorder during perinatal period. The development of knowledge on perinatal mental illnesses among public and the health professionals has resulted in timely recognition and treatment of perinatal mental illnesses. Although great volumes of research show high prevalence of perinatal mental illnesses and their impacts on parenting confdence and competence as well as child’s developmental process, there is still lack of research on various aspects of perinatal mental illnesses. To enable early prevention, diagnosis and intervention, it is crucial to identify families who are at an increased risk of perinatal mental illnesses and provide support and intervention to minimise the adverse outcomes. The children’s needs may not be met by providing treatment to parental mental illnesses alone. It is also important to understand the impact of specifc parenting behaviours on child outcomes which is modified by the quality of parenting.

Vulnerable and without protection: Lifetime experiences of abuse and its influence on mental ill health -—An interview study among Swedish women within general psychiatric care

Violence against women is a major global public health issue, and experiencing violence has substantial consequences for the lives of abused women. This study aims to illustrate experiences of abuse and its influence on mental ill health among women seeking general psychiatric care. Ten women seeking general psychiatric care in southern Sweden participated in a qualitative interview study. Content analysis resulted in four categories: Living in fear that persistently influences the substance of life, living with the sense of being worthless, living with a constant question about who you are and living between hope and despair. The theme evolving from the analysis was: Being vulnerable and without protection in a frightful reality that limits one’s possibilities of living and being the person one wishes to be. The results showed that the women described their mental ill health not only in terms of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation and self-harm, but also in relation to feelings of hope and despair, fear, worthlessness and living with a constant question about who they are. The abuse reduces freedom of action, and leads to feelings of insecurity, of not having any boundaries, isolation, and self-contempt and a need to escape. This study provides knowledge of abused women self-reported mental ill health in relation to abuse.

The Association between Physical Education and Mental Health Indicators in Adolescents:A Cross-Sectional Study

Objective:To explore the associations between physical education attendance and mental health indicators.Methods:Using data from the Global Student Health Survey,the frequency of physical education attendance,suicidality-related indicators,loneliness,bullying,and anxiety were all assessed using a standardized self-reported questionnaire.Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate the association between physical education attendance and mental health-related indicators.Results:The study included 276,169 participants from 71 coun-tries(47.3%males,aged 11–18 years old).After controlling for sex,age,food insecurity,close friends,physical activity,sedentary time,others’help,and parents’understanding,physical education attendance was not signifi-cantly associated with suicidal attempts,suicidal ideation,and anxiety.However,compared with no physical edu-cation attendance,individuals attending physical education for 1,2,as well as 5 or more days had significantly reduced odds/ratios of suicide;only 2 days of physical education attendance was associated with a lower odds ratio for suffering from loneliness.Even 1 day of physical education was associated with not being bullied by others.Conclusion:This study suggests that physical education attendance may not have an effective role in reducing mental health illnesses in children and adolescents.Future studies are encouraged to corroborate or negate our research discoveries by using better and further improved study designs.

Pathways to Psychiatry Care among Children with Mental Health Problems

Many children with mental health problems in Egypt,as in many other countries,do not receive the help they need.Investigating the pathways of care is crucial for the early detection and treatment of these children.This study examined referral patterns and the duration of untreated psychiatric illness of 350 children attending two urban clinical settings in Egypt.Diagnoses were made using the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorder and Schizophrenia for School-aged children present and lifetime(K-SADS-PL),Child behavior checklist(CBCL,)and the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.For 46.3%,the most distressing symptom was behavioral problems.A delay in seeking psychiatric help was found.positive family history,and lower socioeconomic class were asso-ciated with delays in psychiatric consultation.For 39.7%of patients,thefirst contact was with a psychiatrist.Most children were referred by relatives.Awareness programs are needed to increase knowledge about and to decrease the duration of untreated illness.

Mental Illness Education through Stories of Lived Experience: Validation Review of the DoNOHarm Framework

The lived experience of people with mental illness is a powerful way to promote mental health literacy and reduce the stigma associated with mental illness.However,there is little guidance on how to do this safely.Mental Illness Education ACT is an Australian organisation that since 1993 has supported volunteer educators to share their individual stories of lived experience to school and community groups.In 2011,they developed the DoNOHarm Framework to assist volunteers to be able to talk about their experiences in a way that is safe for them and for their audience,a gap that they recognised in thefield.This study reports a review of the Framework,considering the extent to which it is supported by the current literature and how it is being implemented and experienced by the volunteer educators.These research questions were addressed by a literature review and interviews with 14 volunteer educators and the staff that support them.The review of published literature over the past 10 years showed strong evidence for three of the six principles of the Framework:Context and Purpose,Recovery Emphasis,and Safe Talking.Although the principle of Respectful and Inclusive Language is widely promoted in the mental healthfield,no recent studies investigated the benefits of this approach.Similarly,there was no recent research into the two principles of Limits to Helping and Self Care.The interviews revealed strong support for the Frame-work among volunteers.It was seen to be effective to protect the safety of both presenter and audience,ensure the relevance of the presentation,give educators confidence in their message and delivery,convey a hopeful message,and make certain that presentations were engaging for the audience.Overall,this review shows that the DoNO-Harm Frameworkfills an important gap for mental health education,with a sound evidence base where there is published evidence available.

The Causes of Mental Illness Among Shona People by Shona Elders in Harare

Mental illness has been part of a global disease burden for years.The greatest challenge has been the scarcity of health professionals.However,indigenous knowledge system has been a resource that has been marginalized in understanding and treating mental illness.This study aimed to explore the causes of mental illness identified by Shona elders,with the view of capturing the psychological themes entrenched in their culturally constructed experiences.In-depth,semi-structured interviews were conducted with five elders and analyzed using the interpretive phenomenological explication method by Hycner.The elders reported frequent exposure to mentally ill individuals within their community.Findings suggest that Shona elders understand a spiritual component dominates mental illness causes.Also,biological and social factors cause mental illness.These findings indicate that there is some congruence on principle and difference in practice between understanding of mental illness by indigenous knowledge system and mainstream psychology.Our results have questioned the absence of valuing cultural approaches in mental illness research.African countries need to review their mental health policies and implementation.There is a need for culture-sensitive practice to maintain the respect of indigenous people.

Factors Influencing Student Nurses’ Willingness to Care for Mentally Ill Patients with Highly Infectious Diseases in Nigeria: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Individuals experiencing mental illness and diagnosed with highly infectious diseases (HID) are doubly stigmatized. Identifying the factors influencing student’s willingness to care for this special population is essential not only to inform stigma reduction strategies but also to provide useful information towards building a critical mass of future compassionate caregivers with ultimate goal of improving the quality of nursing care for mentally ill persons. Methodology: A cross-sectional descriptive research design was utilized to examine 200 participants from a training institution in Ebonyi state. Data was collected using validated author constructed instrument. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized to analyze data. Result: Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that the variables were statistically significant at χ2(4) = 23.133, p < 0.001. This demonstrates that all factors (gender, marital status, incentives, and family type) influence student nurses’ willingness to work with mentally ill patients who have highly infectious diseases. Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that appropriate institutional policies, additional training, and incentives should be adopted to boost student motivation.

Implementation of Smoking Ban in Mental Hospitals： Views of Patients, Relatives and Staff

The Law on Tobacco Control of the Republic of Lithuania （issued in 1996） prohibits smoking in health care facilities. The security implementation is particularly problematic in psychiatric hospitals, where patients with adaptation problems are used to smoking feeling anxiety. Meanwhile, experts and scholars do not agree on the benefits or harm of smoking for individuals suffering from mental disorder. Republican Vilnius Psychiatric Hospital undertook an investigation of the attitudes of those mostly concerned--the patients, their relatives and the staff of the hospital, also of their views on the ways and feasibility to reduce smoking in the hospital. It was concluded that the main cause of patients＇ smoking is addiction, and hospital staff recognize that mental disorders contribute to the increase in dependency. Other reasons--smoking reduces tension, facilitates adaptation to environments, enhances contacts. Most patients and their relatives believe that smoking should not be banned, while the staff believes it should be prohibited in part by a variety of increasing of constraints. The most effective means to reduce smoking in the hospital would be rich leisure activities, education and professional help.

The Role of Collectivist Culture and Mental Health Literacy in Mental Illness Stigma Among University Students in Indonesia

Mental illness stigma is a social construct which involves labelling individuals with mental illness which in turn discredits and results in the loss of dignity of the individual,as well as causing the individual concerned to experience discrimination,marginalization,and isolation.Mental illness stigma can be influenced by various factors.Factors that can affect mental illness stigma are collectivist culture and mental health literacy.This study used quantitative methods with the aim to investigate the role of collectivist culture and mental health literacy in mental illness stigma.The subjects in this study were 160 undergraduate students at tertiary institutions in Indonesia.The instruments used in this study were the mental illness stigma scale,collectivist culture scale,and mental health literacy scale.The data analysis technique used in this study is multiple regression.The results of multiple regression tests showed a regression coefficient value of 0.239 and a coefficient of determination value of 0.057.The significance value of mental health literacy is 0.022(p<0.05)with a standardized beta coefficient of-0.189 and the significance value of collectivist culture is 0.232(p>0.05)with a standardized beta coefficient value of-0.098.These results indicate that both collectivist culture and mental health literacy simultaneously play a role in reducing the mental illness stigma of university students in Indonesia.Mental health literacy has a significant role in reducing mental illness stigma among university students in Indonesia,whereas collectivist culture does not have a significant role in reducing mental illness stigma.

The Influence of Stigma on People with Mental Illness

People with mental illness have not only struggled with the psychological and physical symptoms of the disease but also suffered from social discrimination and prejudice.[1]This article expresses the negative impact of mental illness stigma on the stigmatized group through the study of previous literature.The purpose of this article is to improve the public’s stereotypes and prejudices of people with mental illness,so as to provide a basis for researchers to identify effective de-stigmatization strategies.

Prevalence and Factors Associated with Risky Sexual Behaviors among Patients with Severe Mental Illness in Uganda: A Descriptive Cross Sectional Study

Background: Persons living with severe mental illness (SMI) which includes schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and recurrent major depressive disorder are predisposed to risky sexual behavior (RSB). There is a paucity of data on this problem in sub-Saharan Africa and where research has been undertaken, only a limited range of risk factors have been considered and most of it was undertaken before antiretroviral therapy was universally available, hence the need for this study. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence and factors associated with risky sexual behavior among individuals with SMI attending care in central and south western Uganda. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among 393 persons with SMI attending two psychiatric out-patient facilities in Uganda. Psychiatric disorder was confirmed using MINI International Neuropsychiatric Interview version 7.2. RSB was defined as engaging in at least one of four risky sexual behaviours that have been associated with HIV infection in the Ugandan psychosocial environment in the last three months using an 8 item RSB questionnaire used for assessment of RSB. Prevalence of RSB and associated correlates were determined using multiple logistic regression. Results: The Prevalence of RSB in last 3 months’ periods was 24.2% (95% CI: 20.2% - 28.7%). The factors that were independently significantly associated with RSB were: trauma related (history of childhood trauma, past and current sexual abuse, past and current physical abuse) current psychosocial challenges (mental health stigma) and psychiatric illness factors (history of a past manic episode, current psychotic episode, severity of depressive symptoms and severity of manic symptoms). Conclusions: One quarter of clinic attending respondents with severe mental illness in Uganda practice risky sexual behaviour. Factors associated with risky sexual behaviour fall under the domains of past and present trauma, current psychosocial challenges and psychiatric illness factors. This calls for a multi-sectoral approach that includes community awareness about the nature of SMI and the rights of persons with SMI and measures to improve Psychiatric symptom management.

Attitudes of Healthcare Professionals towards Mental Illness: A Survey Study in Ras Al Khaimah

Background: Negative and stigmatizing attitudes and behaviours towards people with mental health problems have the potential to lead to a lack of access to care, under-treatment, social marginalization, and can undermine the relationship between the patient and provider. The study aimed to measure attitude of healthcare professionals towards mental illness. Methods: Across sectional descriptive study was conducted over one month from April to May 2019 at Ras Al khaimah medical and health Science University and affiliated health care facilities. Mental Illness Clinicians’ Attitudes Scale version 4 Questionnaire was used to collect data from participants after obtaining their informed consent with assured confidentiality. Results: The study included 113 health care professionals. The mean score of attitude of health care professionals towards mental illness was 57.8 ± 10.8 out of 96. Negative attitudes were reported about the dangerousness, respect and suspicion over recovery of people with mental health problems, interactions with them in clinical practice, and fear of disclosure to colleagues or friends about mental health problems and confidence in capabilities of assessing mental health problems in primary care. The significant positive attitude was found among participants who were university faculty than those who worked in hospitals and Primary care centres (P = 0.04). Health care professionals who were university faculty and have reported more than 10 years of experience as health professionals reported significantly higher mean scores (P < 0.05). Neither age nor gender, or nationality appeared to be related to overall attitudinal responses towards mental illness. Conclusion: Educational programs might be useful to raise awareness towards the stigmatizing attitudes towards mental health and mental illnesses.