MEDICAL

Medical Students' Attitudes towards Psychiatry



Medical Students' Attitudes towards Psychiatry

The attitude of medicals students towards psychiatry in general can have an impact on the professional as well as the personal behaviors (Niedermier, 2006, pp. 136). It can have an impact in two ways:

1. The mode of care provided

2. Effectiveness in terms of delivery of mental health care

In Singapore, it was noticed that there was deterioration in interest with respect to psychiatry in the nineties regardless of the fact that there were training opportunities the take-up of the training positions that were available were low and the registered specialists that were available were not competent enough to meet the requirement based on the 2007 National Mental Health Blueprint (Neilson, 1981, pp. 1144).

Studies have also shown that a psychiatry rotation could have an impact on attitudes towards psychiatry in a positive direction, as well. It is this positive attitude that is a premise behind the influence of knowledge and student's perceptions regarding mental illness, exam scores of psychiatry, those planning to specialize in psychiatry scoring significantly higher, and choice decisions with respect to specialty(Kuhnigk et. al., 2007, pp. 87, Tharyan et. al., 2001, pp. 355). There has been a study conducted based on it but there is a study conducted by Kuhgnik and Taryan, who have managed to determine how this is said to occur. Their findings concluded that the personal and the educational experience can further be enhanced and can stir more interest if the individuals get an opportunity to have implemented what they have learnt in theory in practice by working directly with the patients and at the same time observing the psychiatrists to further enhance their skills. Doing so, will ensure that they have a netter attitude towards psychiatry as well as towards the mental illness. However, there is no apparent evidence that possessing a positive attitude will result in an increased interest in the quantity of the medical students who would take psychiatry as a specialization for their career (Sloan et. al., 1996, pp. 407, Sierles et. al., 2003, pp. 252).

The process of Psychiatry rotations has aided in the improvement of the perception of the students in terms of social and biological causes of mental disorders being crucial and the treatments that are associated with it are effective and efficient in countering. Such attitudes that are said to be positive by nature are said to be transient (Galka et.al., 2005, pp. 257). Bu the sustainability of the positive attitude that is said to be associated with rotation has not been studied (Burra et. al., 1982, pp. 31).

A literature search using search engines Google Scholar and PubMed yielded 3030 articles on attitudes of medical student's towards psychiatry. Furthermore, refining the keywords deteriorated the number of articles to fifty two articles in totality. Upon analyzing those articles there were nearly half of the articles concluded a positive change in the attitude at the end of the posting.

This makes us keen to study and analyze the attitude of medical students towards the ...