ABSTRACT: People who experience any type of mental disorder not only face difficulties with their health challenge they also suffered from negative responses that come from their social environment in many forms such as discrimination, denial or social rejection and this leads to stigma.
Mental illness stigmatization within the healthcare professional has an impact on the delivery and provision of care services to the patients and is an obstacle to health seeking and maintaining good health management. This study aims to explore stigma for mental disorder in primary health care physicians and nurses because they are the first contact when a patient needs help.
The study took place in Dammam Primary Health Centres and recruited physicians and nurses who completed the Opening Mind Scale for Health Care Providers as a tool of measuring levels of stigma. The results of the questionnaire were compared between both groups and correlated with their sociodemographic data. Result prove the existence of stigma in primary health physician and nurses the mean score is 55.13 out of 100. with Saudi staff having more stigma than non- Saudi , another factor that associated with more stigma is gender as female express more stigma than male .
At the end of the study stigma in physicians and nurses was almost equal. This needs to be considered in future planning to minimize negative perception of people with a mental illness by initiating anti-stigmatization program for health care provider as a means of primary prevention and health promotion
