The effect of medical education on attitudes towards schizophrenia: A five-year follow-up study

Danaçi A.E.; Balikçi K.; Aydin O.; Cengisiz C.; Burak Uykur A.

The effect of medical education on attitudes towards schizophrenia: A five-year follow-up study

Date

2016

Authors

Publisher

Turkish Association of Nervous and Mental Health

Abstract

Objective: It has been widely acknowledged that the community and health professionals hold negative attitudes toward patients with impaired mental health. This constitutes a major obstacle for those patients in coping with their disease, managing their care, and hence regulating their lives. Although studies carried out in Turkey document the presence of stigma, they provide limited information about ways for solving this problem. Drawing on the literature, the present study investigated the effect of medical education on stigmatization. Method: During the 2008/2009 academic year, 106 freshmen who were majoring in the Medical School at Celal Bayar University volunteered to participate in the present study. Participants had not yet received any theoretical or practical training in psychiatry. At the beginning of the study, they were informed about the purpose of the study and accordingly were requested to fill out a consent form. The 32-item schizophrenia subscale of the Attitude Questionnaire developed by the Psychiatric Investigations and Education Center (PAREM) was administered to the participants. Along with the questionnaire, they were also asked to provide demographic information. After 5 years, the participants who completed their psychiatry internship were reassessed with the same instrument. Results: 106 volunteers participated in the present study. The majority of the participants were female (54.7%) with equal balance of income and expenditures (65.1%) and a mental disease percentage of 5.6%. Findings showed that students' attitudes towards schizophrenic patients significantly changed positively as they proceeded from the first year to the fifth year. Results demonstrated that as students move through the years, they report more positive attitudes in the areas of etiology of schizophrenia (p < 0.01), treatment options (p < 0.01), approach to schizophrenic patients (p < 0.01), and social interactions (p < 0.01). Conclusion: We claim that the development of positive attitudes should be integrated into the mental health curriculum not only in particular years but also throughout the entire years of education. Along this continuum, we believe that students would become more aware of the needs of schizophrenic patients and gain an ongoing intuition toward the difficulties that the patients encounter. Viewed together, at the stage of acquiring medical/ psychological skills, students should be given the opportunity to have direct contact with patients in order to give adequate response to patients' needs and thus observe the improvement at the end of the treatment.