Psychosocial Rehabilitation Services Provided, Success and Challenges Facing Mirembe National Mental Hospital In Dodoma Municipality-Tanzania: A Qualitative Study

Background: There has been a marked increase in people with disability all over the world including Tanzania. Consequently, the psychiatric disabled people are not healthily maintained, become apathetic, have difficult in trouble coping, are discriminated against, are not integrated into local communities, and most of them face massive unemployment. To address this condition of psychiatric disability, the Tanzanian government established Mirembe psychiatric hospital and Hombolo rehabilitation village whose ultimate goal was to provide the psychiatric disabled people with psychosocial rehabilitation services. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the psychosocial rehabilitation services provided and to determine successes and challenges facing Mirembe National Mental Hospital regarding provision of the said services. Methodology: A descriptive field research method with a qualitative approach was used; whereby key informants were interviewed using in-depth interview guide and phenomena were verified using direct observation. Results: A variety of rehabilitation services provided including social skills training, self-care skills training, behavioural re-shaping, decision-making skills and vocational skills training were found. It was also found that there are some challenges associated with the provision of these services including few and less qualified staff in the provision of services and fewer resources for the provision of services as related to constraints in funding. Conclusion and Recommendations: Inadequate rehabilitation services are being provided to the mentally disable patients and staff providing services are less qualified as referenced to the standards. Efforts need to be done by the MNMH to utilise their resources especially land and stakeholders to support the institution so that standards for the provision of psychosocial rehabilitation services are raised.