Attitude of medical undergraduate and postgraduate students towards psychiatry: a cross-sectional study

It is a universally known fact that psychiatric disorders are common, affecting millions of populations worldwide. Psychiatry as a discipline of medicine has been emerging in the recent years. Nevertheless, it has become apparent from studies that there has been a negative attitude towards psychiatry presumably due to the prevailing various myths and misconceptions in a budding medical student's mind.

Aim was to assess and compare the attitude of undergraduate and postgraduate medical students towards psychiatry and to know the gender differences in the attitude. This is a cross-sectional study. Participants consisted of students studying in SN Medical College, Bagalkot. Subjects were given specially designed socio-demographic proforma and Attitudes Toward Psychiatry-30 items (ATP-30) questionnaire which is a five-point attitude scale for assessing the attitude. The data collected was analysed with the help of SPSS version 11.

The sample consisted of 469 subjects of which 48% were males and 52% were females. In total, 80.8% (n=379) subjects reported to have positive attitude towards psychiatry. Females had more positive attitude than male. We did not find any difference in the attitude of undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Even though our study revealed a positive attitude towards psychiatry, there is always a way for improvements in the form of better psychiatry training at the undergraduate level. There is a need to conduct multi-centric studies which can involve larger sample size.