Beliefs toward mental illness: Findings in a sample of military personnel

Abstract

Stigma associated with mental illness is recognized as a significant public health issue. Cultural factors, particularly those embedded in military culture, significantly influence the stigma experienced by military personnel. Within military environment, current research illustrates that the stigma experienced by military personnel towards mental illness has been identified as a barrier to accessing mental health services. The purpose of the present study has been to investigate the beliefs towards specific psychopathological entities, as well as to identify the factors associated with mental illness stigmatization by military personnel. The data analysis elucidate certain distinctions in dimensions related to mental illness stigmatization by the certain sample. The findings suggest that initiatives directed at enhancing mental health care utilization in the military would be most effective by concentrating on mitigating mental illness stigma associated with seeking mental health services. Further comprehensive studies are warranted to delve deeper into these results. The sample consisted of three hundred military personnel. 273 of them were males, the mean age was 33.5 years (±7.7) and the mean of years of professional experience was 14.8 (±7.7). A demographics questionnaire (covering data as gender, age, professional experience, marital status, educational level and direct/ indirect contact with people with mental disorders) was administered and Stigma Cognitive Schemes were assessed with the Mental Illness Stigma Scale. The scale is composed of 9 items and a Comprehensive Stigma Perception Index finally derived from the mean of items per mental disorder. Confirmatory Factor Analysis in Mental Illness Stigma Scale presented satisfactory goodness-of-fit indices. Through analysis of variance for dependent measures, statistically significant differences were identified for all the items of the scale per mental disorder. The highest scores in Comprehensive Stigma Perception Index appeared for Schizophrenia and Substance Use and the lowest for Anxiety Disorders and Anorexia. With reference to the sources on which the participants relied to answer the questions it emerged that Comprehensive Stigma Perception Index for Alchool use disorder and Anorexia were predicted by information from media. The current study elucidated distinctions in dimensions related to the stigma of mental illness within a military personnel sample. These findings suggest that initiatives directed at enhancing mental health care utilization in the military would be most effective by concentrating on mitigating mental illness stigma associated with seeking mental health services. Further comprehensive studies are warranted to delve deeper into these results.