Attitude toward mental illness and psychiatry among the medical students and interns in a medical college.

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.

METHODS: A cross-sectional questionnaire based study was conducted among the medical students and interns at Dhulikhel Hospital.Two self-rating scales; Attitudes towards Psychiatry-30 and Attitudes to Mental Illnesswere used to assess attitudes towards mental illness and Psychiatryamong the total 159 subjects. Descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test were applied using SPSS- 16 for analysis.

RESULTS: Among the total 159 subjects, 44 (27.7%) were interns. Comparison of means of each item in Attitudes towards Psychiatry-30 and Attitudes to Mental Illnesswas done between males and females, medical students and interns, fi rst semester and ninth semester students. Most of the subjects showed neutral attitude towards all the scoring items; though there were a few signifi cant 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.

KEYWORDS: attitude; interns; medical students; mental illness; psychiatry.