Background: Attitudes to psychiatry and mental illness among medical undergraduates are key factors in determining their choice of psychiatry as a career and willingness to deal with psychiatric disorders in general practice.
Methods: The responses of 108 medical students from the first and fourth year batches not exposed to psychiatry were compared with those of 139 final year students and interns who had completed varying components of psychiatric training using validated questionnaires that assessed their attitudes to psychiatry and mental illness, and their interest in psychiatry as a career choice.
Results: A greater proportion of students exposed to psychiatric training endorsed positive attitudes to mental illness than those not exposed (odds ratio=0.4; 95% confidence intervals: 0.21-0.71; p=0.002). The overall attitude towards psychiatry did not differ between students before or after psychiatric education. Women students were more likely to consider a career in psychiatry (odds ratio=2.9; 95% confidence intervals: 1.36-6.21; p = 0.004), but the proportion of students of either gender wishing to pursue psychiatry as a career option did not differ significantly with psychiatric training.
Conclusion: Psychiatric education positively influences the attitudes of medical students towards mental illness and some aspects of psychiatry but does not increase the number of students wishing to pursue psychiatry as a career. Urgent and radical changes in psychiatric education for undergraduate medical students are required to meet current and future requirements of medical personnel trained to deal with psychiatric disorders.