The aim: The aim of the research is to analyze the social perception of mentally disabled people and of attitudes toward them among teachers, according to certain variables such as subjects' age, gender, type of education and degree of interaction with mentally disabled people, understood as work experience with mentally disabled children.
Material and methods: A number of 120 teachers (44 men and 76 women) answered to a 26 items of Scale of perceptions and attitudes regarding mentally disabled people investigating the following dimensions: the concept of mental disability, the image of mentally disabled people, integration into society, education. Several variables were taken into consideration. Result analysis and interpretation has been performed by means of the specialized psychological statistics software SPSS 23 for Windows.
Results: Female teachers (M=17.00) have a significantly more favorable attitude - t (118)=-3.75, p=.001 than men (M=12.25) who work as teachers and younger teachers and those with no experience with children with mental disability have a more favorable attitude toward mentally disabled people than their colleagues.
Conclusions: Age, experience with mental disabled children and gender of teachers are influencing the perception and the attitudes regarding people with disability.