THE ASSOCIATION OF GENDER AND BIG FIVE PERSONALITIY TRAITS TOWARD MENTAL ILLNESS STIGMA AMONG THE STUDENTS OF FACULTY OF MEDICINE MULAWARMAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Mental illness stigma is one of the main obstacles for the treatment on people with mental illness and it can aggravate their illness. Stigma does not only belong among the laity but also health workers and medical students who are dealing with the patients with mental illness. Therefore, the convenient predictors are needed to predict the mental illness stigma level in someone, for example, the gender and big five personality. It leads this research to find out the association of gender and big five personality traits toward mental illness stigma among the students of Faculty of Medicine Mulawarman University, Samarinda. This study used the analytical design with cross-sectional approach. The instruments used were the PMHSS questionnaire to measure the stigma of mental illness and the IPIP-BFM-25 to assess the five dimensions of big five personality consisting of: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The results indicate a significant difference of stigma between two genders, where the female have a lower stigma rather than male (p = 0.000). Openness to experience (p = 0.011) and agreeableness (p = 0.003) have been found to have a negative association with stigma, while conscientiousness (p = 0.178), extraversion (p = 0.202), and neuroticism (p = 0.011) had no association with stigma. Future studies are needed to explore the other variables that can affect the mental illness stigma.