Abstract:
Background: Beliefs about mental illness shape individuals’ behaviour towards people with mental
illness. Adolescents and young adults are susceptible to developing a mental disorder comes with the
unwillingness to seek professional help and their belief. This study seeks to assess the beliefs of
adolescents towards mental disorders in a Secondary School in Abuja Municipal Area Council, Federal
Capital Territory, Abuja, Nigeria, Methods: This was a descriptive cross sectional study designed to
determine belief of adolescents about mental illness in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
Multistage sampling method was used to select participants. Data was analyzed using statistical package
for social sciences (SPSS 25) version. Results: Only 18.8% of the adolescents correctly stated that mental
illness is like any other illness. Three-quarters believe that anyone can become mentally ill even
celebrities. A high proportion of the adolescents (44.7%) knew that mental illness can be passed from one
generation to another. The most commonly endorsed cause of mental illness as believed by the adolescents
were; drug abuse (91.3%), brain injury (78.7%), evil spirit (73.1%), diseases (58.1%), and poverty
(53.1%). Punishment from God was not a common response as 71.9% disagreed with this item. Only
26.6% of the adolescents knew that being bullied can cause mental illness. Adolescent’s belief about
symptoms of mental illness showed that only a few adolescents were able to correctly identify symptoms
of mental illness as sadness (18.5%), and excessive fear (27.9%), restlessness (25.7%), insomnia (24.7%).
Half of adolescents (52.3%) identified seeing things that are not there as a symptom of mental illness and
less than half (39.7%) knew that people that talk to themselves are mentally ill. Conclusion: Mental health
experts should engage the cultural and social institutions in communities to enlighten them about the
features, causes, risk factors and management of mental illness in order to entrench the correct belief about
mental illness among adolescents and young people.
