Investigation of beliefs and attitudes of emergency service staff towards mental illnesses

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study was to investigate the beliefs and attitudes of emergency service staff towards mental illnesses. METHODS: The descriptive study was conducted between March and June 2017 with 57 volunteer health staff working in the emergency room of a university hospital. The data were collected through the Introductory Information Form and the Beliefs Toward Mental Illness Scale (BMI). In the analysis of the data, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test were used. RESULTS: The mean scores of BMI subscale scores of emergency workers were 22.54±5.58 for “Dangerousness”, 27.81±7.65 for “Poor social and interpersonal skills and incurability”, 2.07±2.08 for “Shame”, and 52.42±11.74 for total scale score. It is found that emergency service staff’ distribution of “Shame” subscale score was statistically significant only gender variable (U: 267.0, p