Internalized Stigma among Inpatients with Mental Illness in Turkey and Factors Affecting It

Objective: To investigate the internalized stigma levels of the mentally ill patients hospitalized in the psychiatry clinic of a university hospital in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey and the factors affecting their internalized stigma levels Design: A descriptive and cross-sectional study Setting: The study was conducted at the Inpatient Psychiatry Department, Cumhuriyet University Research and Implement Hospital, Turkey Subject: Three hundred ninety-one inpatients Main Outcome Measure: Data were collected with the Socio-Demographic Information Form and the Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness Scale (ISMI). Results: Of the 391 patients studied, 48.6% were determined to suffer high levels of internalized stigma. It was determined that patients unemployed, having low levels of education and income and living in a village suffered higher levels of internalized stigma. In addition, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression, perceiving their illness as a very serious one, considering his/her disease as untreatable, hiding the illness, and not having any support from their families and people around them also suffered higher levels of internalized stigma. The economic status of the patient, the way he/she perceives the severity of the disease and his/her tendency to hide the disease have been identified as important risk factors associated with internalized stigma. Conclusion: Internalized stigma is a significant problem among hospitalized patients. In order to reduce internalized stigma, practical applications can be implemented by increasing the number of individual and group patient education programs and evaluating the effectiveness of these programs.