Higher levels of psychiatric symptomatology reported by health professionals working in medical settings in Greece

BACKGROUND Psychological distress in healthcare workers may vary across different specialties. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in the rate of anxiety and depression between medical and mental healthcare workers. METHODS The sample was randomly selected and consisted of 229 workers from the medical health sector and 212 from the mental health sector, aged 39.8 ± 7.9 years old. Health workers from University and General Hospitals from all over Greece participated in the study. The Greek version of the Symptoms Rating Scale For Depression and Anxiety (SRSDA) was used. Statistics were processed with SPSS v. 17.0. RESULTS The medical health professionals showed statistically significantly higher scores in all the subscales in comparison with the mental health sector workers, independently of years serving in the department. The rates of a possible psychiatric disorder (score over cutoff points) were significantly elevated on the Beck-21, melancholy and asthenia subscales. CONCLUSIONS Medical healthcare workers appear to suffer from psychological distress more than their colleagues in the mental sector.