TITLE:
Stigma of Mental Illness: Social Distancing Attitudes among Registered Nurses in Australia
AUTHORS:
Tan Kan Ku, Michael Ha
KEYWORDS:
Stigma, Mental Illness, Social Distancing
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Biosciences and Medicines,
Vol.3 No.12,
December
18,
2015
ABSTRACT:
Background: Stigma of mental illness is
often examined in social psychology and psychiatric rehabilitation using attitude
studies. Participants of these studies are among health professionals and
general public members. A common measure of stigma is using validated scale
which measures the opinion on mental illness. Method: A cross-sectional survey
was presented to 208 registered nurses. Principal component analyses (with
oblique rotation) were used to identify underlying dimensionality in the
correlations of items for social distancing. Subscale score variations were
analysed across nurse type and ethnicity to examine the discriminant validity
of the subscale. Results: Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed one
dimension accounting for 43.5% of the variations within items for social
distancing. Developed as scale, termed Stigma towards Psychiatric Patients
(STPP), reliability analysis indicated high internal consistency with
respective alpha coefficient of 0.8. Chinese general nurses scored highest on
social distancing than the other three groups: Chinese psychiatric nurses,
Anglo general and Anglo psychiatric nurses. Conclusion: Psychometric evaluation
of the Stigma Scale (STPP) suggests it is a reliable instrument for measuring
social distancing attitudes towards mental illness. The effect of ethnicity on
stigmatising attitudes is not entirely accounted for by exposure to people with
mental illness.