Authors: AINA Israel Odunmayowa, ISRAEL-AINA Yetunde Tinuola.
Background: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is an extension of the concept of first aid to cover mental health conditions. It is the help offered to a person developing a mental health problem, experiencing a worsening of an existing mental health problem or in a mental health crisis. Efficient performance of first aid duty is dependent on a good knowledge of sick bay personnel about mental health conditions and MHFA techniques. Therefore, this study seeks to determined the knowledge of sick bay personnel about MHFA prior to their training.
Materials and Methods: A group of personnel who were in charge of sick bays in some of the primary and secondary schools in Egor Local Government Area (LGA) in Benin City, Nigeria were invited for the monthly seminar of the Institute of Child Health, University of Benin in which MHFA was incorporated. A structured questionnaire was administered to the 24 participant present, which was designed to evaluate a few component parts of the MHFA as applicable to the training they were to undergo.
Results: It was shown that 62.5% of the respondents do not know about MHFA, while 54.2% of the participants have not seen a child with a psychiatric emergency before. Furthermore, 62.5% of the respondents do not know how to assess the risk of suicide. The majority (66.7%) could not identify the components of MHFA among a list of options.
Conclusion: It was concluded that there is a need to train all workers in the health care facilities of schools on MHFA.
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