Health care practitioners' perceptions of public mental health care in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Abstract

This qualitative study explored the perceptions of health care practitioners (HCPs) concerning public mental health care in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Data were collected from thirteen purposively selected HCPs using in-depth unstructured interviews (males = 6, females = 7). Data were transcribed verbatim and later thematically analysed. The findings suggest that mental health professionals perceive mental health services to be both inadequate and of suboptimal quality. Specifically, they perceived public mental health care to have lower priority, to be poorly resourced and lacking in patient-oriented care qualities.

Keywords:

• health care practitioner
• mental health care
• mental illness
• low- and middle-income countries

Acknowledgement

This study is part of a larger research project titled: “Barriers to health care and the right to health for persons with mental illness in South Africa: How can access and the right to health be improved?” which is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), SWE-2010-226.The authors would also like to thank all institutions who provided the necessary ethical clearance and support to conduct the study as well as all participants for their willingness to contribute to the research study.