attitude of psychologists, psychiatrists, chronic psychiatric patients and ordinary viewers toward a TV series with the main character of a psychologist

ABSTRACT

Popular TV series and sitcoms have received different reactions from people of different classes. The present study was conducted to measure the positive and negative attitudes of psychologists, psychiatrists, chronic psychiatric patients and ordinary healthy viewers toward an Iranian TV series entitled 'The Physicians' Building' whose main character was a psychologist. The study tool was a researcher-made questionnaire that measured the attitude toward the mentioned TV series with 19 items based on Likert scale. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential tests. The participants were selected voluntarily and included 30 psychologists, 25 psychiatrists, 16 under-treatment psychiatric patients and 57 ordinary people [total of 128 participants]. The results showed that in most cases, psychologists' opinion about the series was different from the other groups of participants [P = .04]. Psychologists strongly emphasized on the bad influences of this TV series in the society [P = .02]. There was a significant difference between the attitudes of psychologists toward the studied TV series as compared to psychiatrists, psychiatric patients and ordinary people.