The stigma of mental health professionals towards users with a mental disorder.

Individuals with mental disorders are labeled in such a way that it leads to stigmatization. This generates a disadvantage as regards to the rest of the members of the society, limiting their participation as active members within it and at the same time being deleterious to their way of life. Mental health professionals are not safe from internalizing these stereotypes and prejudices assumed from their environment, thereby showing stigmatizing attitudes and behaviors towards the users in the different mental health resources.

El estigma de los profesionales de salud mental hacia los usuarios con trastorno mental / The stigma of mental health professionals towards users with a mental disorder

Introducción: Las personas con trastornos mentales padecen el etiquetado que provoca el estigma y este a su vez les genera una desventaja con el resto de los componentes de una sociedad, limitando su participación como ciudadanos activos en la misma y mermando su calidad de vida. Los profesionales no están a salvo de interiorizar estos estereotipos y prejuicios asumidos por su entorno reflejándose en sus actitudes y comportamientos hacia los usuarios en los diferentes servicios de salud mental.Metodología: El diseño empleado en este estudio para conocer el estigma de los profesionales de salud mental es un estudio cuantitativo, analizando el nivel de estigma que presentan los profesionales mediante el cuestionario de Atribución-27 (AQ27). La muestra resultó de 59 profesionales.Resultados: Los resultados obtenidos ponen de manifiesto la existencia de actitudes y comportamientos estigmatizadores por parte de los profesionales analizados. Dentro de los datos sociodemográficos de la muestra cabe destacar que el mayor nivel de formación de los profesionales disminuye las actitudes y comportamientos relacionados con el estigma.Conclusiones: Se ha podido constatar la existencia de diferentes factores del estigma como son la ayuda, la coacción, la piedad y la evitación que afectan a los profesionales de la salud mental. (AU)

Introduction: Individuals with mental disorders are labeled in such a way that it leads to stigmatization. This generates a disadvantage as regards to the rest of the members of the society, limiting their participation as active members within it and at the same time being deleterious to their way of life. Mental health professionals are not safe from internalizing these stereotypes and prejudices assumed from their environment, thereby showing stigmatizing attitudes and behaviors towards the users in the different mental health resources.Methodology: The design used in this study to determine the stigma of mental health professionals is a quantitative study, which was used to analyze the level of stigma presented by professionals using the Attribution Questionnaire-27 (AQ27). The sample consisted of 59 professionals.Results: The results obtained showed the existence of stigmatizing attitudes and behaviors by the professionals analyzed. Within the sociodemographic data of the sample, it should be noted that the higher level of education of the professionals decreased the attitudes and behaviors associated to stigma. Conclusions: It was possible to confirm the existence of differentstigma factors such as helping, coercion, pity and avoidancethat affect mental health professionals. (AU)

Reliability and validity of the student stress inventory-stress manifestations questionnaire and its association with personal and academic factors in university students.

BACKGROUND: Stress affects us in every environment and it is also present in the educational sphere. Previous studies have reported a high prevalence of stress in university students. The Student Stress Inventory-Stress Manifestations (SSI-SM), identify stressors and evaluate stress manifestations in adolescents but its validity in university students remains uncertain. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to determine the internal consistency and validity of an adapted version of the Student Stress Inventory-Stress Manifestations (SSI-SM) for university students and to investigate if high stress levels are associated with personal and academic factors. DESIGN AND METHODS: In this quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional study, we included 115 university students of the Nursing Degree during the second semester of the 2014/2015 academic year. Information about personal issues, lifestyle and academic performance was recorded and the stress was evaluated with the SSI-SM questionnaire. The internal consistency and homogeneity of the SSI-SM questionnaire was tested and a factorial analysis was performed. RESULTS: After the homogeneity analysis, the final version of the SSI-SM questionnaire included 19 items, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.924. In the factorial analysis, 4 factors were found ('Self-concept', 'Sociability', 'Uncertainty' and 'Somatization'; all Cronbach's alpha >0.700). Students with higher values on the SSI-SM were, in overall, women (41.0 ±â€¯12.7 vs. 33.2 ±â€¯9.5; p = 0.001) and had significantly more family conflicts (47.6 ±â€¯13.8 vs. 35.2 ±â€¯9.6; p < 0.001), consumed less alcohol (R = -0.184, p = 0.048), slept less hours (R = -0.193, p = 0.038) and had worse academic performance in Clinical Nursing (36.3 ±â€¯10.4 vs. 41.2 ±â€¯13.3, p = 0.039). CONCLUSIONS: After exclude three items of the original SSI-SM, higher scores in the SSI-SM are correlated with stress level in a cohort of university students of the Nursing Degree. Family conflicts, female gender, absence of alcohol consumption, few sleep hours and poor academic performance are associated with higher stress levels.

Dietary habits of patients with schizophrenia: a self-reported questionnaire survey.

The present study was carried out to determine the dietary habits of patients with schizophrenia and the influence of these habits on the degree of obesity. The study was developed in a sample of 159 patients, who were given a self-reported questionnaire, to ascertain the influence of socio-familiar aspects, pharmacological treatment, and dietary habits. Anthropometric measurements (body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC)) were also taken. Patients with schizophrenia presented unhealthy dietary habits, as indicated by the finding that 51% of the patients took no longer than 15 min to eat, 40.8% did not eat fruit daily, and 63.1% did not eat fish. Women were three times more likely to be obese than men (odds ratio (OR) = 2.91, P = 0.021). Patients classified as having unhealthy dietary habits have a 2.33-fold higher risk of obesity than patients with good dietary habits (OR = 2.33, P = 0.034). In summary, this paper highlights the fact that patients with schizophrenia have a detrimental dietary pattern that is associated with an increase in BMI and WC, with the consequent development of obesity and related metabolic alterations, regardless of the pharmacological treatment being followed. Future research directions will include exploring the need for nutritional education programmes to improve the dietary habits of such patients.