Workplace Social Distance toward Psychiatric Patients among Employers

Employment-related problems of psychiatric patients are attracting attention in the field of mental health and welfare. Employers’ social distance from psychiatric patients negatively influences patients’ chances to work. Therefore, social distance should be carefully measured and evaluated among employers. In this study, we developed the Workplace Social Distance Scale (WSDS), rephrasing the eight items of the Japanese version of the SDS to apply to the work setting in Japan. We examined the reliability and validity of the WSDS among 938 employers. Factor analysis extracted two factors from the scale items: ‘negative factor’ and ‘positive factor.’ Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the WSDS was 0.821. In the scores for the test and the retest, a significant correlation was seen for the scale overall and respective subscales, although the correlation for positive items was somewhat low, at 0.415. In addition, the WSDS was significantly correlated with the Japanese version of the SDS. These findings suggest that the WSDS represents an approximation of social distance in the workplace among employers. Our study assessed the reliability and validity of the newly developed WSDS for measuring social distance among employers in Japan. Future studies should investigate the reliability and validity of the scale in other countries.