Attitudes of general population and physicians towards alcohol addiction

Objective: To assess attitudes of general population and physicians towards alcohol addiction and to investigate whether medical education has a positive effect towards alcohol dependence or not.

Method: 99 medical doctors workingat Afyonkarahisar University hospital, in public hospitals or health centers and 101 people selected from the community to represent the overall population participated in our study. Socio-demographic information of the participants were received, and then they were asked to complete the Social Distance Scale (SDS), the Characteristics Scale (CS), the Skill Assessment Scale (SAS), and the Dangerousness Scale (DS) anonymously, without the related stigma. Validity and reliability of this survey were reported in previous studies. DS consists of eight (8) items concerning Social Distance, measuring establishing contact with person affected by a given condition. CS consists of twenty (20) items. This evaluates the impact of personality and behavior attributed to a person affected by a given condition. SAS defines various not obviously expressed abilities related to a given condition. DS consists of four (4) items, investigating whether a mentally disabled patient is a threat to others.

Results: Comparing Doctors’ and general population groups according to the stigma sub-scale, there was no statically significant difference between the two groups (p>0.05).

Conclusions: In this study, it was found that there was no significant difference between attitudes towards alcohol addicts between Doctors’ and General population groups, 2 out of 3 people in both groups have negative attitudes towards alcohol addicts and medical education did not change these attitudes. Discrimination and stigma applied towards addicted people may obstruct the treatment of addiction. Especially, doctors play an important role for reducing stigmatization towards addicted people within the community. During medical education (especially rotation of psychiatry), application and development of new education strategies about addiction, in addition to basic courses, may help to reduce negative attitudes towards alcohol addicted people.