Physico-Social Support Needs for Inclusion in an Instructional Package for Family Management of Mild Mentally Challenged Persons in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

The main purpose of this study was to determine the physico-social support needsfor inclusion in instructional package for family management of mild mentallychallenged persons in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Two specific purposes guided thestudy. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The target population of thestudy was 81 experts (24 psychiatric doctors, 35 psychiatric nurses, 6 psychologists, 2family sociologists and 14 mild mentally challenged instructors), from which thesample size of 63 experts was determined using a research advisor table and selectedusing a multistage sampling procedure. A structured questionnaire titled Physico-social Support Needs for Family Management of Mild Mentally Challenged PersonsQuestionnaire (PSNFMMMCPQ) was used for data collection. The instrument wasface-validated by five experts and had a reliability coefficient of 0.91 using CronbachAlpha statistics. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the researchquestions. Findings revealed that experts approved the inclusion of all the specificphysical support (3.03±0.68) and social support (3.12±0.70) tasks in the physico-socialsupport instructional package for family management of mild mentally challengedpersons. The study concluded that a functional instructional package must havespecific support tasks in physical (such as brushing teeth daily) and social (such asregular interaction with peers) domains tailored to meet the needs of MMCPs. Basedon the findings, it was recommended that instructional package developers shouldensure that specific tasks of physical and social support needs are included in theinstructional package for family management of mild mentally challenged people.