A confirmatory factor analysis in identifying the nature of mental health in Jaffna society: A follow-up study

Abstract

This study focuses on the nature of mental health conditions in post-war Jaffna society, which was carried out in 2018. This is a follow-up study of the Jaffna socio-economic health study performed in 1999. The general population was considered for drawing the sample. The sampling units are 1121 families of the 1999 study drawn using two-stage stratified random sampling, but the subjects are changed as one of the siblings in the sampling unit, who has now become adult after 20 years and his/her spouse instead of parents. A sample of 1036 sibling adults is available from the follow-up to explore the information in the current study. An interviewer administrated questionnaire was used to record the data on mental disability measures. Specific measures were formulated from symptomatic dimensions; psychological, physiological, psychophysiological, and ambiguous. The data collected on the variables of these dimensions coded according to the requirement of statistical analysis. Outcomes of exploratory data analysis, cluster analysis, and logistic regression analysis reported in 2020. The present study reported using confirmatory factor analysis; the number of factors determined by the percentage of variation and communality of the varimax rotations. Factor analysis on various mental health symptoms of 17 variables revealed that the psychological variables; feeling lonely, failure of expectation, wondering un-worthwhile events, and restlessness formed a combined major factor determining the nature of mental health while feeling unhappy, low spirit, and sleepless also formed individual minor factors in this context. These outcomes confirm that the psychological sphere was dominant in exploring the nature of mental health in Jaffna society. Further, the variables of physiological, psycho-physiological, and ambiguous dimensions formed individually gender-specific with two-factor formations, within which the factors of wives are dominant over the factors of husbands. Considering the gender by combining all dimensions, we were able to find altogether eight factors characterized suitably.