Mental Health Professionals’ Attitudes to Severe Mental Illness and Its Correlates in Psychiatric Hospitals of Attica: The Role of Workers’ Empathy

To describe mental health workers’ attitudes to severe mental illness and to explore its socio-demographic and professional correlates, including the influence of empathy. A total of 127 mental health staff working on the psychiatric hospitals of Attica participated in the study. Stigma was assessed...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Community mental health journal 2020-05, Vol.56 (4), p.614-625
Main Authors: Economou, Marina, Peppou, Lily Evangelia, Kontoangelos, Konstantinos, Palli, Alexandra, Tsaliagkou, Irene, Legaki, Emilia-Maria, Gournellis, Rossetos, Papageorgiou, Charalampos
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude of Health Personnel
Attitudes
Community and Environmental Psychology
Demography
Empathy
Health behavior
Health care
Health problems
Hospitals, Psychiatric
Humans
Medical personnel
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Mental disorders
Mental Disorders - therapy
Mental Health
Mental health care
Mental health professionals
Mental health services
Nurses
Original Paper
Personal experiences
Perspective taking
Pessimism
Psychiatric hospitals
Psychiatrists
Psychiatry
Reactivity
Severity
Social distance
Social Stigma
Sociodemographics
Stigma
Surveys and Questionnaires
Workers
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Summary:To describe mental health workers’ attitudes to severe mental illness and to explore its socio-demographic and professional correlates, including the influence of empathy. A total of 127 mental health staff working on the psychiatric hospitals of Attica participated in the study. Stigma was assessed with the Attitudes to Severe Mental Illness scale (ASMI) and the Greek Social Distance scale; whilst Empathy with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Participants’ unfavourable attitudes to severe mental illness were limited to pessimism about recovery, difficulty in viewing people with mental illness as similar to other people and desire to keep distance in intimate encounters. Professional group and personal experience with mental illness were found to predict stigma. Only perspective taking was associated with both stigma measures; while Fantasy was positively correlated with social distance. Anti-stigma interventions in mental healthcare should prioritize nurses and psychiatrists and aim at enhancing perspective taking.
ISSN:0010-3853
1573-2789
DOI:10.1007/s10597-019-00521-6