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Attitudes towards mental illness among medical students in China: Impact of medical education on stigma
Author(s) -
Zhu Yifan,
Zhang Hanwen,
Yang Ge,
Hu Xinran,
Liu Zhening,
Guo Na,
He Hongbo,
Sun Bin,
Rosenheck Robert
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
asia‐pacific psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.654
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 1758-5872
pISSN - 1758-5864
DOI - 10.1111/appy.12294
Subject(s) - mental illness , stigma (botany) , psychology , causation , psychiatry , clinical psychology , social stigma , china , mental health , medicine , family medicine , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , political science , law
Stigma towards people with mental illness impedes effective treatment. A recent study found that Chinese students were less socially accepting of people with mental illness than counterparts from other countries. The current study examined stigma among Chinese medical students at different levels of training. Methods Medical students (N = 1372 from 12 Chinese schools) were surveyed with a questionnaire addressing attitudes and beliefs about people with mental illness. Analysis of variance was used to compare responses from students: (1) with no psychiatry training; (2) who had only taken a didactic course; and (3) who had completed both a course and a clinical rotation. Specific attitudes were identified through factor analysis. Interest in further training and other personal experience were also examined. Results Factor analysis revealed attitudes favoring: (1) social acceptance of people with mental illness, (2) not believing in supernatural causes of mental illness, (3) bio‐psycho‐social causation, (4) rehabilitation, and (5) social integration. The absence of consistent trends across training levels suggested that education did not increase nonstigmatized attitudes. Areas of most stigmatization were low social acceptance and little favor for social integration. Measures most strongly correlated with nonstigmatized attitudes were as follows: interest in clinical psychiatry, belief that psychiatry should be more valued, and having friends with mental illness. Discussion Although medical school education showed little effect on attitudes, students with more individual experiences such as planning to continue clinical psychiatric training, believing psychiatry should be more valued, and having friends with mental illness had less stigmatized attitudes than others.