Correlation between suicide literacy and stigmatizing attitude of nurses toward patients with suicide attempts

Resumen

Suicide is a deliberate process of endinglife and it is one of the ten leading causesof death in different countries around theworld. Averagely, every forty seconds, one individual loseshis life due to suicide in the world. Stigma, on the otherhand, is a negative tag given by people to the groupsand individuals who are different in terms of appearance,race, physical and mental health. Research has shown thatStigma is a barrier to care for those who attempt suicide.Since nurses play an important role in the care of patientswith psychiatric disorders, their level of literacy and theirattitude and behavior towards this group of patients havean impact on stigmatizing and non-stigmatizing behaviorand the quality of nursing care. Therefore, the presentstudy aimed to investigate the correlation betweensuicidal literacy and stigmatizing attitude towards suicidalpatients in nurses working in selected hospitals of ShahidBeheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2018. In thisdescriptive-correlational study, the samples were selectedrandomly among nurses working in psychiatric, poisoning,burn and emergency wards of selected hospitals. Fordata collection, besides questionnaire of demographicdata collection, two questionnaires of suicide literacy andstigma questionnaires were used after determining the validityand reliability. Data analysis was performed using thelatest version of SPSS software and descriptive and correlationstatistics. The findings of the study showed thatthere is a positive correlation between the two variables ofsuicide literacy and stigma (p <0.05). It means that, withincreasing literacy of nurses in the field of suicide, theirattitude is also increased. In other words, increasing theliteracy of nurses about suicide will improve their attitudein this regard. Regarding the fact that there is a significantrelationship between suicidal literacy and stigma of nursesabout the patients with suicide attempts, it can be hopedthat increasing literacy of nurses will have a positive effecton their attitude and behavior with these patients and ultimatelyon the quality of care provided by them