Expressed Attitude of Mental Health Professionals Towards Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Background: The expressed attitude is a psychological component that represents a mental and emotional
entity that inherent or characterizes a person. The positive and negative attitude that we express represents
who we are and how we are connected to ourselves and society. An attitude is usually formed based on the
individual’s past and present events in life. Also, social environment and lifestyle play a role in attitude
formation. Studies indicate that mental health professionals hold mixed attitude such as positive and negative
towards mental illness hence this study was carried out to find out the expressed attitude of mental health
professionals towards children with autism spectrum disorder.
Method : Attitude Questionnaire by (Sethi et al., 1982) was modified for the study and the responses were
collected from 21 mental health professionals (5 psychologists, 5 psychiatric nurses, 4 psychiatrists, 4
psychiatric social workers, 3 special educators). The collected data was computed with descriptive statistics,
t-test and ANOVA by using SPSS version 20.
Result : The outcome of the study indicate, the significant difference between the positive and negative
attitude of mental health professionals towards children with autism spectrum disorder and also it provides the
supporting data on positive emotionality of mental health professionals towards children with an autism
spectrum disorder.