title: Psychiatrists' empathy, beliefs and attitudes towards veterans suffering from combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Empathy is a powerful and necessary skill for understanding another person's subjective experience. In this study we wanted to explore psychiatrists' attitudes towards PTSD, general empathy, possible differences related to age, sex and regional location in Croatia.
  
  
  METHODS
  205 psychiatrists from different Croatian regions participated in this study. To define psychiatrists' attitudes towards PTSD patients a questionnaire was devised. It contained 14 items related to psychiatrists' ability to live through emotional and social conditions of PTSD patients. BarOn Emotional Quotient-Inventory Empathy Subscale was used to measure the empathy among the subjects.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This study has found statistically significant differences regarding gender in measured variables of the designed questionnaire. Male participants believed they were able to understand war veterans' feeling's and relate to traumatic experience while female participants stated that they had the ability to understand the trivial triggers for suicidal intentions. Regional differences were found in the understanding of war traumatic experience and social deviations occurring in PTSD. Older psychiatrists stated their incomprehension of the social difficulties the PTSD patients were facing. The years of experience in the psychiatric field were associated with inability to understand the patients' feelings'. Differences in empathy among the subjects were not found.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The understanding of the empathic process in the therapeutic approach towards PTSD explored in this study was associated with basic variables such as gender and age but the construct of empathy itself is more complex and related with variables not assessed in this study, so our findings are preliminary and further research is needed.
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia.
authors.forename: Marijana
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Braš
authors.forename: Lovorka
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Brajković
authors.forename: Vibor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Milunović
authors.forename: Ivana
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bičanić
authors.forename: Franko
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Haller
authors.forename: Veljko
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Dorđević
authors.forename: Davor
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Miličić
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003130:Combat Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D017523:Croatia; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011570:Psychiatry; D012737:Sex Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires