Abstract
Background:: Globally, people with mental illness frequently encounter stigma, prejudice, and discrimination by public and health care professionals. Research related to medical students attitudes toward people with mental illness is limited from India. Aim:: The aim was to assess and compare the attitudes toward people with mental illness among medical students. Materials and Methods:: A cross-sectional descriptive study design was carried out among medical students, who were exposed (n = 115) and not exposed (n = 61) to psychiatry training using self-reporting questionnaire. Results:: Our findings showed improvement in students attitudes after exposure to psychiatry in benevolent (t = 2.510, P < 0.013) and stigmatization (t = 2.656, P < 0.009) domains. Further, gender, residence, and contact with mental illness were the factors that found to be influencing students attitudes toward mental illness. Conclusion:: The findings of the present study suggest that psychiatric education proved to be effective in changing the attitudes of medical students toward mental illness to a certain extent. However, there is an urgent need to review the current curriculum to prepare undergraduate medical students to provide holistic care to the people with mental health problems.
Copyright
Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Derivative-Non Commercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit.
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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License, which permits unrestricted reproduction and distribution, for non-commercial purposes only; and use and reproduction, but not distribution, of adapted material for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original work is properly cited.
