Internalized stigma and psychache in individuals with mental disorders: a cross-sectional comparative study

The present study is aimed to investigate the levels of psychache and internalized stigma in individuals with mental disorders and it was conducted in descriptive, cross-sectional, and relational design for these purposes. The research was conducted with a total of 183 patients hospitalized in a university hospital psychiatric clinic, without any sample selection. Research data were collected with Personal Information Form, The internalized stigma of mental illnesses scale and Psychache Scale. The analysis of the data was made using the Linear Regression model with the Enter method and descriptive statistics. The mean age of the individuals participating in the study is 34,30 ± 8,95, and their mean education period is 9,38 ± 4,36. Of the participants, 54.1% were male and 51.9% were married. As a result of the analyses, it was determined that the psychache scale mean score of individuals diagnosed with depression was 43.46 ± 9.56, and the internalized stigma mean score of individuals diagnosed with anxiety was 93.93 ± 12.25. As a result of the research, it was determined that individuals with anxiety disorders had a high level of internalized stigma and that the group with the highest psychache was individuals diagnosed with depression. Additionally, psychache has been found to be an important determinant of individuals’ internalized stigma levels.