[Selected personality dimensions and occupational burnout in the group of professional and volunteer firefighters]. / Wybrane wymiary osobowosci a wypalenie zawodowe w grupie strazaków zawodowych i ochotników.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this research was to examine the relationships between selected personality dimensions and occupational burnout among professional and volunteer firefighters. Difficult conditions are the cause of loss of not only health but also life. Such working conditions may cause occupational burnout consisting of employee's exhaustion. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The group under examination consisted of 164 firefighters, including 76 volunteers aged 19-61 years (M = 32.49, SD = 9.21) and 88 professional firefighters aged 20-49 years (M = 33.85, SD = 10.05). This research employed the Maslach Burnout Inventory and Gough and Heilburn's Adjective Check List along with the Personality and Axiological Model (MOA) (competences, relations, autonomy). RESULTS: The results of the conducted research indicate differences between the examined groups of firefighters in personality dimensions (Ord: t = -2.739, p = 0.006; Mls: t = -2.159, p = 0.032; competences t = -2.390, p = 0.017). The research also enabled assessing the correlations with occupational burnout. The greatest relationship with occupational burnout in the group of volunteer firefighters concerns succorance (Suc) and total occupational burnout, and the greatest relationship with occupational burnout in the group of professional firefighters pertains to the competence dimension from the MOA model. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the conducted research should be related to the cognitive aspect (the application of the new MOA model in this professional group) and attention should be paid to the personality differences between the groups of volunteer and professional firefighters. The application value for more effective work of psychologists with this professional group is also important in terms of the results obtained. Med Pr. 2021;72(5):509-19.

[Semantic differential in the study on the stereotype of mentally ill people - comparative study 10 years later]. / Dyferencjal semantyczny w badaniu stereotypu chorych psychicznie - badania porównawcze po 10 latach.

OBJECTIVES: This article examines how mentally ill people are perceived by psychology students. It was inspired by a study on stereotypical perception of mentally ill people carried out 10 years ago, which was published in Polish Psychiatry (2000). METHODS: A modified version of the semantic differential, which was used 10 years ago, was applied. The version consisted of: subject selection of 30 pairs of adjectives which describe mentally ill people, marking on a scale the extent a given object possesses a feature, describing what percentage of the mentally ill possess a feature as well as describing the level of certainty (%) of the respondent on the feature intensity. RESULTS: Compared to a similar group of subjects studied ten years ago, the examined 152 students (F 138, M 14), on average aged 21.8, received results showing higher maturity and lesser weight of stereotypical thinking regarding the mentally ill. The subjects currently studied stated lower certainty (71%) than the previously studied group (79%), in most mentally ill people having problems in contact with others as well as with themselves. They perceive mentally ill people in a wider perspective (11 differential categories in 2000 compared to 19 differential categories in 2010. CONCLUSIONS: The studies on stereotyping of the mentally ill show beneficial changes in awareness among psychology students. New psychology teaching programmes sensitizing to mental problems, the complexity of illness processes, likely impact of social advertising, and fostering social support for the mentally ill, contributed to the positive changes in results.