Influence of social distance toward individuals with psychotic disorders by medical background

Background: Discrimination of mental illness has formed obstacles to the development of the public health system. More and more evidence shows that many psychiatric patients say that much discrimination in life comes from the medical system. Medical caregivers may also exhibit a discriminatory attitude, resulting in a decline in the quality of medical care. Many studies explored whether medical staff has a different attitude towards the mentally ill from the general public. However, the medical staff’s working years and their social distance to mental illness patients are still unclear and rare. The cross-sectional study aimed to analyze the association of social distancing and the working seniority of health professionals. Methods: A cross-sectional study design was applied with convenience sampling. The proper research was conducted from May 13, 2020, to May 31, 2020 by an internet-based questionnaire. We use exploratory factor analysis to measure the convergent validity and calculate Cronbach’s α value to measure the reliability. We used a two-sample t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to perform univariate analysis. Multiple regression analysis was conducted with the independent variables significant in univariate analysis, and the social distancing average score was the dependent variable. Results: There were 216 valid questionnaires. The response rate was 57.75%. The junior group comprised 105 participants and the senior group 111 ones, with the majority being female (80%). The senior group’s average age was 43.01 (SD =5.109), significantly higher than 31.08 (SD =6.159) in the junior group. The Cronbach’s α value was 0.915 that showed relatively good reliability. The descriptive analyses of social distancing scores in two working seniority groups demonstrated average total scores of 16.67 in the senior group, 18.87 in the junior group. There was a significantly negative association between age and social distancing score. The master’s degree and/or doctor degree group and the bachelor’s degree group were considerably higher than those of the senior high school degree group. Gender and marital status had no statistical significance in the multiple regression analysis. Conclusions: Healthcare professionals with a shorter career time were shown to have a relatively favorable attitude toward mentally ill people. Multiple regression analysis suggested that attitudes to mental illness among the health care provider were positively associated with younger age and higher education levels. It was recommended that a good social contact experience with the patient, such as work and psychiatry training, is compelling. It implied that a systemic education program for caring for psychiatric patients is necessary for Taiwan’s health care institutions.