Impact of psychiatry training on attitude of medical students toward mental illness and psychiatry

Abstract

Context:Attitude of fresh graduates toward psychiatric patients is important to bridge the treatment gap due to mental illness. Psychiatry as a subject has been neglected in the undergraduates of MBBS.Aims:(1) To compare the attitude of medical students and interns in a medical college toward mental illness and psychiatry. (2) To assess the impact of psychiatric training on attitude toward the mentally ill person and mental illness.Settings and Design:Cross-sectional, single assessment study conducted at a tertiary hospital.Subjects and Methods:Participants consisted of medical students of 1st and 2nd year who didn’t have any exposure to psychiatry and interns, who had completed their compulsory 2 week clinical posting in psychiatry. Participants were individually administered sociodemographic proforma, General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12), opinion about mental illness (OMI) scale, and attitude to psychiatry-29 (ATP-29) scale.Statistical Analysis:Standard descriptive statistics (mean, percentage), Chi-square test.Results:A total of 135 participants formed the study sample, with 48, 47, and 40 participants from 1st year, 2nd year and interns, respectively. Mean GHQ score was 14.03 for the entire sample. There was better outlook of interns toward psychiatry and patients with mental disorders in comparison to fresh graduate students in some areas. Overall, negative attitude toward mental illness and psychiatry was reflected.Conclusions:Exposure to psychiatry as per the current curriculum seems to have a limited influence in bringing a positive change in OMI and psychiatry.

Attitudes toward people with mental illness among medical students

“…In line with previous research,[ 16 19 ] our study also demonstrated improvement in medical students’ attitude towards people with mental illness in benevolent and stigmatization domains. There were no statistically significant differences were observed in separatism, stereotype, restrictiveness, and pessimistic prediction domains.…”

“…Very few studies from India assessed the impact of psychiatric exposure in changing the attitudes of medical students toward people with mental illness. [ 15 16 17 ] It is therefore, the present study was aimed to examine the attitudinal differences between students those have undergone psychiatric training exposure and those who have not, toward people with mental illness.…”

Attitude towards psychiatrists: A comparison between two metropolitan cities in India

“…Previous studies conducted in India have shown a remarkably low opinion of psychiatry among medical professionals. Gulati et al (2014) found that medical students and interns in medical schools were discouraged from family members and peers from taking up psychiatry. An astonishing 85% of medical interns in this study believed that a residency in psychiatry is only considered when medical graduates fail to obtain a position in any other specialty.…”

Changing Medical Students′ Attitudes to Psychiatry through Newer Teaching Techniques

“…Some studies have shown that psychiatric postings do change some of the attitudes of medical students, though many studies do not replicate this (Gulati, Das and Chavan, 2014,[ 5 ] Konwar, Pardal and Prakash et al ., 2012,[ 8 ] Amini, Moghaddam and Nejatisafa et al . 2013,[ 1 ] Lyons, 2014,[ 10 ] Fischel, Manna and Krivoy et al ., 2008).…”