Higher levels of psychiatric symptomatology reported by health professionals working in medical settings in Greece

The sample was randomly selected and consisted of 229 workers from the medical health sector and 212 from the mental health sector, aged 39.8 ± 7.9 years old. Health workers from University and General Hospitals from all over Greece participated in the study. The Greek version of the Symptoms Rating Scale For Depression and Anxiety (SRSDA) was used. Statistics were processed with SPSS v. 17.0.The medical health professionals showed statistically significantly higher scores in all the subscales in comparison with the mental health sector workers, independently of years serving in the department. The rates of a possible psychiatric disorder (score over cutoff points) were significantly elevated on the Beck-21, melancholy and asthenia subscales.Medical healthcare workers appear to suffer from psychological distress more than their colleagues in the mental sector.The mental health state of healthcare professionals is an important issue, influencing the services they provide [1,2]. Healthcare workers are likely to suffer from occupational stress, which may lead to serious mental and physical health problems [3]. They exhibit high prevalence rates of social dysfunction, somatization, depression and anxiety symptoms [4,5]. The psychiatric domain is considered quite a stressful work environment. Mental health professionals who work in heavily stressful mental healthcare settings are frequently subject to the violent and aggressive behavior of some patients and experience anxiety about being hurt or further intimidated [6]. Burnout syndrome and depression have been found to be highly prevalent among nurses and residents in the mental health sector, especially among nursing staff [7]. However, some studies attribute stress to organizational, rather than work-related matters, in the psychiatric field [8,9]. In comparison to mental health workers, whose stress is well established, stress in medical workers is under-recognized and understudied. Some studies argue that medical st