A new survey is now open, seeking the views and opinions of current and former mental health nurses across Scotland on the subject of mental health stigma.
NHS Scotland and See Me, Scotland’s programme to end mental health stigma and discrimination, are working together on the new piece of research which will help make much-needed improvements for the country’s mental health nurses.
Scotland is facing a critical shortage of mental health nurses. The past decade has brought a sharp UK-wide fall in the number of mental health nurses and for the past two years, Scottish universities have been unable to fill places on mental health nursing courses.
The new research seeks to explore what is behind this, including the idea of ‘stigma by association’, a term which describes the stigma experienced by mental health nurses due to their association with people experiencing mental illness.
We often think of mental health stigma –a result of the negative attitudes or beliefs based on a preconception, misunderstanding or fear of mental health – only affecting people living with mental health conditions, but it can impact other people too, including people who work with those with experience of mental illness.
Mental health nurses can experience the unfair impact of stigma, just because of the role they chose, and the people they help.
This piece of research seeks to understand what this stigma looks like and other issues faced by the workforce, work out how to improve them and make real changes to workforce health and wellbeing, retention and recruitment, and positive patient outcomes.
Dr Patty Lozano-Casal, programme manager at See Me, said: “International studies have shown that the mental health nursing workforce often faces stigma as a result of their role, and we are keen to find out if this is true from a Scottish perspective – and what we can do to overcome it."
The short survey is open now! Whatever your experiences, your views and opinions could make a huge difference.