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Title:
A picture of mentally ill person among psychiatrists
Author:
Subject:
psychiatry ; stigmatisation ; mental illness
Abstract:
The study refers to mutual relationship between mentally ill person and psychiatrist as a representative of discriminated discipline in medicine and general population. The aim of the study was to find the answer to following questions: do psychiatrists take part in stigmatization process of people with mental illness, do they feel themselves stigmatized, is there a relationship between those two phenomenon. There were included in the research socio-demographic data of surveyed psychiatrists to explore relationship between the level of stigmatization of mentally ill people and the way they treat the social perception of psychiatrists and their professional role. Polish psychiatrists were surveyed and 232 sets of questionnaires were analyzed. Two types of self-completion questionnaires were used. The first was used to enquire the relation of psychiatrists to mentally ill people and the second was used to find out how psychiatrists treat the social perception of psychiatry and their professional role. Conclusions: (1) surveyed psychiatrists despite their special education and professional mission present similar level of stigmatizing attitudes comparing to the general population, (2) higher level of stigmatization of mentally ill people among psychiatrists is associated with younger age, male sex, having competence in psychotherapy and lack of specialty in community psychiatry, ( ; 3) the majority of respondents perceive stigmatization of psychiatry and their own work by other doctors and general public, (4) the higher is level of perceived stigmatization of psychiatry, surveyed doctors are less prone to stigmatize mentally ill people.