Pathways to care and its impact among patients with mental illness: a narrative review

Background: Health system for patients with Mental illness is a low public health importance at majority of developing or less developed nations. Those who are in need of treatment don’t receive required mental health services at a level of large public health facilities. They favour to seek care from easy-going community resources like traditional faith-based healers or quacks. Therefore, inadequate community-based formal mental health services leave native healers as ultimate and viable avenue for mental health treatment. Limited accessibility to mental health care facility affects the pathways to seeking care, makes it lengthy and lengthy pathway increase suffering period of clients and make their recovery difficult. Methodology: PubMed, Embess, Google Scholars and other electronic search engines were used to get high standard evidence regarding factors which cause delay in proper care or provide early engagement with quality health services to minimize expenditure and maximize prognosis. Results: The evidence of different sources indicate lack of literateness, superstition, cultural myth and lack of understanding about mental illness make patients available to faith- healers but general practitioners, community nurses, school teachers and social workers can work as door keepers to move patients to adequate level of mental health care. Conclusion: There is a need to focus and identify the factors of pathways to care that influence or act as barriers in public mental health service delivery in developing or less developed country. Because well regulated mental health practices both in public and private treatment centres can help to combat against discrimination of people with mental disorders and try to make them productive for themselves as well as for community.