The Influence of Social and Economic Motivational Factors in the Performance of Health Professionals Involved in Mental Health Care in Douala, Littoral Region of Cameroon

Aim: Social and economic motivational factors can influence the performance of health workers. This and has special importance in mental health. In low and middle-income countries, health professionals are essential for the delivery of mental health interventions. However, inadequate mental health professional’s performance is a very widespread problem. Motivation is a prerequisite for better organizational performance. Motivation involves the biological, economic, social and cognitive forces that activate behavior. In everyday usage, the term “motivation” is frequently used to describe why a person does something. It is the driving force behind human actions. Thus this study seeks to investigate the extent to which motivational factors influence the performance of health professionals involved in mental health care in Douala, Littoral Region of Cameroon.

Study Design: A descriptive cross-sectional and analytical study design was adopted to investigate the extent to which motivational factors influence the performance of 210 mental health workers.

Place and Duration of Study: It involved five mental health institutions in Douala, from May 2022 to August 2022.

Methodology: A snowball sampling technique purely based on referrals and a purposive sampling technique to select the participants was used. Pilot test was done on 6 mental health workers in Minds Clinic Buea using a Crobach’s Alpha formula to calculate and the value 0.985 was gotten to prove the validity and reliability of the research tools. Data was collected quantitatively and qualitatively with the use of self-administered, well-structured questionnaire and face to face interview was applied to collect data, and analyzed with SPSS version 23.0.

Results: Results revealed that social (rs=0.406), economic (rs=0.248), cognitive (rs=0.471) and biological (rs=0.263) motivational factors influenced the performance of health professionals involved in mental health care and consequently improve the quality of mental health care. Spearman’s rank correlation revealed that motivational factors improved work performance. Also, motivational factors have a significant relationship with performance at a two tail test. Moreover, there was general consensus among the management staff that the general motivation packages and strategies are yielding desired results and this has positively affected the moral and performance of staff.

Conclusion: Overall the findings of the study suggest that to improve the performance of health professionals involved in mental health care in Douala Littoral Region of Cameroon there is the need to carefully define motivational factors that are reliable and strategically relevant ensuring that they are free from criterion contamination and deficiency.