Abstract
Introduction: Medical students tend to have a neutral or negative attitude to Psychiatry as a discipline. This study was initiated to explore the attitude towards Mental illness and Psychiatry among the Medical students and Interns in Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences (KUSMS).Method: A cross-sectional Questionnaire based study was conducted among the Medical students and Interns at Dhulikhel Hospital (Kathmandu University Hospital). Two self-rating scales; Attitudes towards psychiatry (ATP-30) and Attitudes to mental illness (AMI) were used to assess attitudes towards mental illness and Psychiatry among the total 159 subjects. Descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test applied using SPSS-16 for analysis.Results: Among the total 159 subjects, 56.6% were males and 27.7% were Interns. Comparison of means of each item in ATP-30 and AMI was done between Males and Females, Medical students and Interns, First semester and Ninth semester students. Most of the subjects showed neutral attitude towards all the scoring items; though there were a few significant differences in mean scores of some items in group wise comparison. Conclusions: Overall attitudes towards Mental illness and Psychiatry among the Medical students and Interns in our Medical School were positive or neutral. A further study with medical students from different institutions is needed to get a detail nationwide picture. Key words: Attitude, Interns, Medical Students, Mental illness, Psychiatry.
Highlights
Medical students tend to have a neutral or negative attitude to Psychiatry as a discipline
Risal et al Mental Illness and Psychiatry among the Medical Students and Interns in a Medical College differences in attitude towards mental illnesses and Psychiatry among the medical students in different semesters and the interns undergoing compulsory rotatory internship. This descriptive cross-sectional questionnaire based study was conducted at Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences (KUSMS) after getting approval from its Institutional Review Committee (IRC) in April 2011
We tried to document the presence of family history of mental illnesses in the subjects but 41 of the respondents did not enter it while 100 reported absence of such family history
Summary
Medical students tend to have a neutral or negative attitude to Psychiatry as a discipline. This study was initiated to explore the attitude towards mental illness and Psychiatry among the medical students and interns in Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences. Increasing manpower demand in Psychiatry is not keeping pace with supply.[1,5,14,15,16,17] There are several studies showing significant positive changes in students’ attitude after their psychiatric training,[18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31] making doctors more responsive to the psychological dimension of physical illness.[25,32,33,34,35,36]
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