Attitudes of Elementary School Teachers toward Mental Illness

Goya Choi; Eun Joung Choi

doi:10.12934/jkpmhn.2015.24.2.107

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Choi and Choi: Attitudes of Elementary School Teachers toward Mental Illness

Original Article

Journal of Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 2015; 24(2): 107-115.

Published online: 30 June 2015

DOI: https://doi.org/10.12934/jkpmhn.2015.24.2.107

Attitudes of Elementary School Teachers toward Mental Illness

Goya Choi¹, Eun Joung Choi²

¹Department of Nursing, Seonam University, Namwon, Korea.

²Department of Nursing, Kosin University, Busan, Korea.

Corresponding author: Choi, Eun Joung. Department of Nursing, Kosin University, 262 Gamcheon-ro, Seo-gu, Busan 602-702, Korea. Tel: +82-51-990-6447, Fax: +82-51-990-3970, jacob7410@kosin.ac.kr

Received 23 March 2015 Revised 16 June 2015 Accepted 23 June 2015

(open-access):

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose

This study is done to investigate the attitudes of teachers toward mental illness and to provide appropriate information about mental illness.

Methods

The participants were 228 teachers recruited from 15 elementary schools in the National Capital region and B metropolitan city. Data were collected from October to December, 2013 and analyzed using t-test, ANOVA and Scheffeé test with SPSS 18.0.

Results

Neutral attitudes (77.4±7.79) toward mental illness were shown among the teachers. A negative attitude for stereotyping (23.2±6.08), a positive attitude for optimism (19.3±3.01) and neutral attitudes for coping (19.3±1.92) and understanding (15.6 ±3.05) were revealed.

Conclusion

The results indicate that elementary school teachers have neutral attitudes towards mental illness which is closely related to the experience of learning about mental illness. Thus, when teachers learn about mental illness they can understand and guide children who have unusual behaviors.

Keywords: Attitudes, Mentally ill, School teachers

Figures and Tables

Table 1

General Characteristics of Subjects (N=228)

^†Include bereavement, divorce.

Table 2

The Attitudes of Severe Mental Illness of the Subjects (N=228)

Table 3

The Attitudes of Severe Mental Illness according to General Characteristics (N=228)

^*Include bereavement, divorce.

Notes

This article is a condensed form of the first author's master's thesis from Kosin University.

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