The Role of Faith Healer Visits in the Management and Prognosis of Mental Illness in Iraq

Background: Mental illnesses denote to disorders generally characterized by abnormalities of mood, thought, and/or behavior. Different attitudes toward mentally ill individuals were found among families, ethnicities and countries, the cultural and religious beliefs often affect the opinions about the nature and the origin of mental illness and even influence the attitude toward those who have mental illness. Objectives: To investigate and document the rate of mentally ill patients who are visiting the faith healers and the effect of that visit on the management of their condition. Method: This is a cross sectional study was done in Merjan Teaching Hospital during the period from November 2017 till February 2018 . The sample composed of 187 mentally ill patients (80 males and 107 females). A semi-structured questionnaire was used for information into socio-demographic data and questions about the visit to faith healers (time of the visit, the effect of the visit on the management, source of referral to the faith healer and if the money given or not). Diagnosis of mental illness was made according to DSM-V. Results: 57.2% of the patients in the present study were females, 61% of the patients were married. 41.2% of our sample completed secondary school and 52.9% of them were unemployed. (74.3%) of patients had history of visit to faith healer. 25.1%, 22.5% and 19.4% were diagnosed as schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, anxiety disorders and depressive disorders respectively. The visit to the faith healers was adversely affecting the compliance of mentally ill patients to their medications in about 76.3% of our sample. There was no significant association between history of visit to faith healers and type of psychiatric disease.