Employability With Mental Illness: The Perspectives of Employers and Mental Health Workers

Abstract

Having prior contact with people with mental illness in the workplace can lead to an improvement in employers’ attitudes toward this group. However, there is currently a lack of instruments to measure attitudes toward the employability of people with mental illness. The overall aim of this study was to develop a Spanish scale of attitudes toward the employability of people with mental illness (CEPEM) and obtain preliminary data regarding its psychometric properties. Ninety-four items from three content domains were selected (attitudes, employability, and impact) and revised in an inter-rater agreement procedure in order to produce an initial scale. The scale was tested by employers and workers from the field of mental health. A reduced set of items was selected according to variability and homogeneity indexes. Additional analyses were conducted to explore the validity of the scale. Internal consistency was estimated for the full 33-item scale. Scale scores partially captured attitudinal differences between employers and workers. Finally, linear multiple regression analysis showed that the scale score, in combination with educational level, can help to predict employers’ intentions to hire people with mental illness. Limitations and future research directions are also addressed.