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Psychiatric Hospital staff's depression indices were not influenced by deinstitutionalization but by gender and years in work

Background

The aim of this study was to assess the staff's depression levels of a Psychiatric Hospital that has undergone transformation to a network of community-based psychiatric facilities.

Materials and methods

The Greek adaptation of Zung Depression self-Rating Scale (ZDRS) was anonymously completed by the working staff two years before and two years after the transformation of their hospital.

Results

Internal consistency of the scale was satisfactorily high in both administrations of the scale [Cronbach's a>0.80]. Deinstitutionalization had no statistically significant impact either on the overall depression scores as measured by the Symptoms Severity Score (SDS). There was no significant difference on the number of staff that had clinical (SDS>70), mild (SDS:60-69) or minimal/mild (SDS:50-59) depression levels [x2(3)=1.07, p=NS] or were overall classified as depressed [x2(1)=0.568, p=NS]. Regarding specific items, after the deinstitutionalization people reported enjoying sex less, but regarding their lives as being more full. On the other hand, there was a mild correlation between SDS and years of work [r=0.137, p<0.05], as well as a significant effect of the female gender, after correction for age and years of work [F(1,242)=13.19, p<0.001]. Women scored worse on items regarding affection and somatic concerns.

Conclusions

This follow-up study verifies the previously found effects of the staff's gender and years of previous service on depression as measured by the ZDRS. The transformation of their hospital into community-based psychiatric facilities, as a direct result of the deinstitutionalization project, did not affect the staff's depression levels.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Giaglis, G., Mantziava, K. & Angelidis, G. Psychiatric Hospital staff's depression indices were not influenced by deinstitutionalization but by gender and years in work. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S346 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S346

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S346

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