ABSTRACT
Background and Aim: Mental health disorders are common problems among health care professionals such as nurses, which can create great problems .The aim of this study was to evaluate mental health status in nursing personnel in the teaching hospitals
Materials and Methods: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was performed in 2013 and included 5837 nurses working in educational hospitals affiliated to the medical universities in Iran. Data were collected by using a general health questionnaire [GHQ- 28] and were analyzed by descriptive and analytical statistics using SPSS 18 software
Results: The results showed that 30.2% of the nurses were mentally healthy and 69.8% of them were exposed to mental health disorders. The mean score of mental health was 31.11+/- 12.37. The highest mean score [the worst condition] of the unhealthy nurses belonged to social performance domain [12.86 +/- 3.38] and the lowest mean score [the best condition] was related to depression domain [4.1 +/- 3.02]
Conclusion: Attention to mental health of the nursing personnel is of great importance and can lead to improvement of nursing care quality. Psychological counseling for nursing personnel is also recommended