Mental Illness and Prejudices in Psychiatric Professionals. Data from the Social Stigma Questionnaire for Psychiatric...

The prejudices about mental illness and the related social stigma are still present in the population. People suffer from both the disease and the marginalization behaviors implemented by the "so-called healthy" towards them and their relatives. Even psychiatric professionals can get sick and suffer for the same reason. The authors of this multicentric study have focused their attention on the presence or absence of groups of psychiatric pathologies among the "insiders". The most frequent pathologies encountered were the mood and anxiety disorders, in a percentage similar to that of the general population. To continue the research on the stigma begun in a previous study, the authors asked themselves if there could be prejudices and/or stigma among psychiatric professionals towards sick colleagues, how they relate in the workplace and how they react to the behavior of colleagues. The stigma questionnaire has been used on psychiatric professionals, and 130 Italian colleagues were tested in the provinces of Avellino, Brindisi and Trento. The data were compared with those of the research on the stigma "Thinking of Psychiatric Disorders as" Normal "Illness" (Tavormina et al. 2016) and it emerged that among the attending professionals there are no statistically significant behaviors of marginalization, exclusion or stigma against sick colleagues, even if there is a certain discomfort in working together. Above all, it emerged that 80% of the interviewees, who have had work experience with sick colleagues, have replied that the latter can treat those who are also sick of their own disease, thus showing esteem and confidence in their work, in analogy with the Jungian thesis of the "wounded Healer" in the myth of the centaur Chiron.