Barriers to care in severe mental illness: accounts from perpetrators of intra-familial homicide
✍ Scribed by Josephine Stanton; Jeremy Skipworth
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2005
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 104 KB
- Volume
- 15
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0957-9664
- DOI
- 10.1002/cbm.3
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Objective:
To review perceptions of barriers to receiving effective mental health care described by patients who had committed intra-familial homicide in the context of untreated severe mental illness.
Method:
Semi-structured interviews addressed issues such as support, help-seeking, experience of illness, and what participants felt might have helped prevent the death(s). transcripts were analysed for themes related to barriers to help-seeking.
Results:
Themes identified included: hiding or minimizing difficulties, lack of knowledge or understanding of mental illness, loss of control in the context of illness, seduction by the illness, reality-distorting effects of the illness, distortion of interpersonal relationships, diminished ability to trust and difficulty acknowledging need for medication.
Conclusions:
Barriers to care exist at individual, interpersonal and wider societal levels and need to be addressed at all of them.