Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy
Open Access
ISSN: 2161-0487
ISSN: 2161-0487
Samreen Naz
Government Medical College, Rajouri, India
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Psychol Psychother
Statement of the problem: Health care is one of the significant dimensions of modern human life. Common individuals are taken care of by the medical health care employees for the health issues. However, the health care employees in health care industry also need attention for their own health to maintain the quality of life. Ever increasing workload and specialization have added to the stress resulting in the poor mental health among hospital employees as well. In this backdrop it becomes vital to study the mental health of health care professionals. The current investigation attempted to assess the mental health of men and women health care employees working in public and private hospital of northern Indian states. It was hypothesized that there is no significant difference in mental health of health care employees in public and private hospitals. Methodology and Theoretical Orientation: Mental health survey was conducted implementing the quantitative research method of research in this study. Hospital employee having less than two years of health care experience was not considered as participant in this investigation. A total of 519 responses were collected during the study of which 39% were from medical and 61% were from paramedical male (47%) and female (53%) employees. To collect target data questions forms were distributed among the permitted hospitals of North India, specifically three states (Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab and Rajasthan). The inclusion of participants was on the basis of convenient sampling after due consent from the participants. Findings: Investigator administered Employees Mental Health Inventory (EMHI, Kumar, 2001) on 264 public and 255 private hospitals’ health care employees. Findings revealed that health care employees in private hospitals scored lower (M=16.90, SD=4.47) than health care employees in public hospitals (M=18.67, SD=4.09) on mental health. Furthermore, this difference in mental health was found to be statistically significant (F(1,518)=22.17, p<.001). The obtained results were in line with the findings of Kevric et al. (2018) which showed that surgical trainees suffered worse psychological health as equated to the universal population. Interestingly, medical health care employees reported higher mental health than paramedical employees. Conclusion and Significance: Results showed that private hospital employees have scored significantly lower than the public hospital employees on mental health. These results might be due to several other factors to be explored in future research, like over workload, limited manpower, poor human resource management, long duration of work shift, payments and facilities differences, etc. The quality of infrastructure could not be considered as a responsible factor in private sector being as competent as in public sector hospitals. This study is innovative in assessing the mental health of health care employees and highlighting good management of medical human resources to support their quality of life and ultimately quality health care services by them. The significance of findings is in guiding the health managers to offer adequate support to all health professionals towards their own mental health by arranging training workshop of meditation, yoga and coping strategies.
Recent Publications:
1. Adler, N. R., Adler, K. A., & Grant-Kels, J. M. (2017). Doctors' mental health, burnout, and suicidality: Professional and ethical issues in the workplace. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 77(6), 1191- 1193.
2. Brooks, S. K., Gerada, C., & Chalder, T. (2011). Review of literature on the mental health of doctors: are specialist services needed?. Journal of Mental Health, 20(2),146-156.
3. Ciarrochi, J., Scott, G., Deane, F. P., & Heaven, P. C. (2003). Relations between social and emotional competence and mental health: A construct validation study. Personality and Individual Differences, 35(8), 1947-1963.
4. Damakle, A. N. (2014). A study of organizational climate mental health and job satisfaction among employees in relation to gender habitat and occupational status (Doctoral Dissertation). http://hdl. handle.net/10603/36635.
5. Evans, S., Huxley, P., Gately, C., Webber, M., Mears, A., Pajak, S., & Katona, C. (2006). Mental health, burnout and job satisfaction among mental health social workers in England and Wales. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 188(1), 75- 80.
6. Gheshlagh, R. G., Sayehmiri, K., Ebadi, A., Dalvandi, A., Dalvand, S., Maddah, S. S. B., & Tabrizi, K. N. (2017). The relationship between mental health and resilience: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal, 19(6).
7. Gururaj, G., Varghese, M., Benegal, V., Rao, G. N., Pathak, K., Singh, L. K., & Misra, R. (2016). National mental health survey of India, 2015-16: Summary. Bengaluru: National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences.
8. Hu, T., Zhang, D., & Wang, J. (2015). A meta-analysis of the trait resilience and mental health. Personality and Individual Differences, 76, 18-27.
9. Kaur, G. 2015). Mental health of adolescents in relation to emotional intelligence. Recent Researchers In Education And Psychology, 20 (i-iv), 26-30.
10. Naz, S., & Sharma, H. (2018). Mental health of healthcare employees: A theoretical perspective on the existing literature. Research Journal of Social Sciences, 9(9).
Samreen Naz has earned Doctorate in psychology. She has investigated the emotional competence, resilience, mental health and job satisfaction among health care employees in India. She has presented her research work many reputed conferences and seminars. She has also published her research work in national and international journals. Presently she is work as visiting clinical psychologist in government medical college at Rajouri, J&K, India.