Influence of sociodemographic factors on the health literacy of individuals with mental disorders.
Eliana Elisa Rehfeld Gheno, Marcos Renan Barbosa, Andreia Catia Jorge Silva Costa and 3 others
PMID 42307370WHAT IT FOUND
Health literacy in adults with severe mental disorders varied by social circumstances.
Married people and those with longer service monitoring scored higher on understanding and active care, while people living alone scored lower on social support.
Key findings
01In 444 participants, understanding and support scores were higher for married or stable-union participants (p=0.041) and lower for those monitored under 6 months (p=0.021).
02Active health care scores were higher for people aged over 54 years (p=0.008) and lower for those monitored under 6 months (p=0.015).
03Social support scores were lower for people living alone (p<0.001), and evaluation of health information scores were higher for people with more than 12 years of education (p<0.001).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The participants were selected by convenience at a single service, so they may not represent people with mental disorders elsewhere. The design was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that a factor caused higher or lower health literacy. Several domains were compared with many sociodemographic variables, increasing the chance of chance findings. The study used only part of the questionnaire, so it did not report the other domains. The paper notes few comparable studies using the same variables, making interpretation difficult.
Declared interests
The article lists funding from CNPq and PROAP grants. It does not report a conflict-of-interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that marriage, education, living situation or monitoring time cause better or worse health literacy. The study is cross-sectional and used a convenience sample, so it only reports associations at one point in time.