Mental Health First Aid Training for Health Care Workers in the Primary Health Care Center in Surabaya

The limitation of number of mental health professionals practicing at the primary health care center requires health care workers to be able to identify and intervene early in cases of mental disorders. Therefore, mental health first aid training for health care workers is needed. This research aims to examine the effectiveness of mental health first aid training to improve mental health literacy of the health care workers in the primary health care center. This was a simple randomized design with one group. The intervention was mental health first aid training which includes six sessions, namely mental health, mental health first aid, depression, anxiety, psychotics, and action plan. The training was attended by 58 health care workers and 1 staff from the Health Office of Surabaya. The instruments used were Mental Illness: Clinicians' Attitude Scale (MICA-4) to measure attitudes towards people with mental disorders and true-false questions to measure knowledge about mental health. The result of data analysis with paired-samples t-test showed that the mental health first aid training was effective in increasing the mental health literacy of health workers. Participants showed a significant increase in understanding of mental health (t = 3.575; p = 0.000). However, the limited opportunities for practice and direct interaction with mental patients affects the insignificant impact of training on changing attitudes towards people with mental disorders (t = -0.371; p = 0.753). Finally, this study recommends training methods that involve more practice in the future.

The effect of pillbox use and education by pharmacist toward medication adherence in diabetes mellitus patients in a Primary Health Care Center in Mataram

Objectives Nonadherence to a long-term therapy, including diabetes mellitus, is one of the global problems that need to be overcome. This study aims to determine the effect of pillbox use and education by pharmacists toward medication adherence in patients with diabetes mellitus in a Primary Health Care Center in Mataram. Methods This research was an experimental research design with pretest-posttest with control group design. The study was conducted from October to December 2019 at Tanjung Karang Primary Health Care Center, Mataram. Measurement of adherence was done using the Adherence to Refill and Medication Scale questionnaire. The higher the score, the more nonadherence the patients. Patients were divided into three groups, which were the control group, educational intervention group, and pillbox and educational intervention group. Each group consisted of 11 patients. Results Patients’ medication adherence increased from 19.54 (SD 4.37) to 15.18 (SD 2.64) in the education and pillbox intervention group (p=0.004). Whereas, in the education and control group, the adherence did not provide a significant change (p>0.05). Based on the difference in adherence scores, it was known that what contributed to changes in compliance was refilling medicine and intentional nonadherence in taking medicine subscale (p=0.024). Conclusions Providing education and pillbox done by pharmacists at the Primary Health Care Center can increase adherence to the therapy of diabetes mellitus patients. Pharmacists at the Primary Health Care Center can use the intervention model to improve the level of adherence of patients with chronic illness.