Educational needs of psychotic and depressive inpatients from Turkey

Abstract

Objective: It is well known that psychiatric patients benefit from learning about mental illness and how to cope with it, but the specific interests of these patients are somewhat unclear. We have been conducting psycho-educa¬tion sessions in our clinic's inpatient wards for a long time, and we wanted to shape our sessions according to the needs of the "consumers". Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the specific educational needs of the patients. Method: We conducted the study as a comparison between psychotic and depressive inpatients, and included 30 patients from each group. A questionnaire was prepared and used to determine the needs, in the light of literature, Turkish culture and our previous experiences. Results: The results showed that; the issue that most of the patients reported strong interest in learning more about was the possibility of relapses and prevention from it. Psychotic patients generally reported interest in issues like medications and side effects, while depressive patients reported learning more about strategies to cope with common problems. Conclusion: We concluded that investigating the educational needs of patients must not be overlooked since it can effect the topics of the psycho-education sessions and if possible separate sessions for depressive patients may be useful as their needs are somewhat different.