Publications

Mental illness is a maladaptive response to stressors from the internal or external environment, manifested bythoughts, feelings, and behavioral disturbances. Consequently, people with mental illness are often seen to beaggressive, dangerous, violent, unpredictable in their behavior, unable to handle too much responsibility, and morelikely to commit offences or crimes. To assess the perceptions, level of knowledge and socio-demographic factorsaffecting the perception of mental health and mental health services among Kampala International Universitystudents. This was an institution descriptive and analytic cross-sectional study that employed both quantitativemethods of data collection to gather data that was used to establish associations between the dependent andindependent variables. A big percentage (45.4%) strongly agreed that mental disease was treatable which was lowcompared to (73.3%), and 0.3% believed that mental disease was not treatable, which was low compared to 3.3% ina study carried out in Uganda by Wallace, some statements which describe a person with mental illness, the majorityof the participants (91.3%) ticked has been admitted, most (77.2%) ticked yes for bouts of depression, a greaternumber (50.4%) ticked yes for born with an abnormality in the brain, majority (61.7%) ticked not responsible forown actions, a greater number (72.2%) of the participants knew a health patient as a person who was incapable ofmaking simple decisions. The perceptions associated with factors and knowledge of mental health and mental healthservices were significantly associated with age and family history of mental illness.Keywords: Mental illness, Behavioral problems, mental health, Family history.