Attitudes of employees of Tehran-based hospitals toward stigmatizing mental patients: a single center experience and literature review

During the recent two decades, the world health organization and the World Association of Psychology have started the campaign for reducing the stigma associated with mental patients in more than 20 countries. The aim of this study is to survey the extent of success and the effects of the campaign on reducing the stigmatization among mental patients. The study was conducted as a survey with a population of all the health and treatment staff in the hospitals that run a psychiatry ward. The sample group consisted of employees from two hospitals. Through Cochrane sampling method, 134 of the employees were adopted as sample group. For data gathering, a questionnaire was employed and the gleaned data were analyzed using T-test and the Pierson tests. Comparing with other patients hospitalized in special hospitals, the participants in two hospitals tended to have more positive and welcoming attitudes regarding themselves and interactions with mental ward patients, acceptance mental patients in social activities, the treatments of the mental patients. The staff in general hospitals or psychiatric hospitals, moreover, kept identical attitudes toward mental patients. Provision of mental health services in social-oriented fashion or in general hospital settings attenuates stigmatization attitudes toward mental patients and their families. This per se results in provision of better and services for this group of patients at earlier stages of the disease.