A Study to Determine the Level of Perception towards the Mental Illness among Peoples in Selected Rural Field Practices Area of Dharwad District

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY : Mental health is recognized globally as being of enormous social and public health importance. "There is no health without mental health" "Good perceptions are magnets for good news. Seen it proven a hundred times." A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Mental health problems and prejudiced perception towards mental illness have common risk factors. An important setting for promoting pupils' health and well-being. OBJECTIVE : To determine the level of perception towards the mental illness among peoples of rural field practice area. And To find association between the perception towards mental illness of peoples with selected demographical variables. DESIGN: A descriptive design was used for the study. RESULT : the perception mean score of rural peoples was 73.17 with Standard deviation of 73.5, median of 6.35and a range of 55-90 as against possible range of 0-136. The level of perception towards mental illness among peoples majority 50 (90%) were medium perception and in 10(10%) were low perception, and 0(0%) high perception. Chi square value is significant between Level of perception towards mental illness with personal variables there was significant association among the variables like age, sex, occupation, type of family, education, family income, ownership of the house, religion, and presence of mental illness. CONCLUSION : Findings of study showed that rural people had perception towards mental illness shows that Low perception 10%, median perception 90%, high perception 0%.