Background: Women with mental illness have a special need for family planning as they carry a high risk of unplanned pregnancy, sexual violence and, the poor obstetric outcomes due to their mental illness, as well as teratogenicity from exposure to psychotropic medications lower antenatal care utilization.
Objective: To assess knowledge, and utilization of family planning and associated factors among women attending psychiatric outpatient clinics in Addis Ababa.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 423 women attending the outpatient psychiatric clinics of three general and one specialized mental hospital in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. A structured and pretested questionnaire were administered by psychiatric nurses. Multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify factors associated with utilization of family planning methods.
Result: Four hundred twenty-two participants who had follow up at the psychiatric outpatient departments participated in the study. Almost 88% of participants had an unintended pregnancy. Only 68% of study participant had ever heard about Family planning. Just over one third (38.6%) reported current use of at least one method of Family planning. Of those not using family planning 73.3% had no intention to have children. And 38.8% did not have any intention to use Family Planning in the future. Fear of drug-interaction with psychiatric medication was the most common reason not to use contraceptives. Having one or two children was associated with higher utilization of family planning [adjusted odds ratio (95%, confidence interval) 2.05 (1.06, 3.99)].
Conclusions: In this study, the majority of women with mental illness were not using family planning methods. The Awareness of the Family planning methods is lower than the national average. Education and counselling about family planning for women attending psychiatric outpatient departments should be strengthened.