Health professional’s social representation about ederly subject with mental health disorders: a pilot study on 790 health professionals

Abstract

Objectives The objective of the present study was to identify the structure and content of the Social Representation (SR) of health professionals regarding elderly subjects with mental health disorders and compare the latter to the lay Social Representation identified in the literature. Method The structure and content of the SR of health professionals was examined in 790 careproviders from the ‘Grand Est’ region of France through the use of the free and hierarchical associations methodology of Abric and Vergés. A prototypical and categorical analysis as well as a similarity analysis and factorial correspondence analysis were applied to the results. Results Analysis of the collated data revealed that the items ‘chronic’, ‘dependent’, ‘behavior disorders’, ‘memory disorders’, ‘solitude’ and ‘social isolation’ were the characteristic components of the central core of the social representation. Discussion Only the peripheral elements were more sensitive to the field of practice of each profession. These findings thus highlight that the SR of health professionals is substantially identical to that of the all-comer SR on several dimensions.