How Mental Illness is Perceived by Iranian Medical Students: A Preliminary Study

2.1 . Study Design

All fifth-year medical students from three academic centers, Roozbeh (mental) Hospital, Iran (mental) Hospital, and Imam Hosein (general) Hospital affiliated in Tehran, Iran, and Shahid Beheshti Universities of Medical Sciences were asked to participate in the study. They completed the questionnaire on the last day of their 4-week psychiatry clerkship. A cover letter enclosed to the questionnaire explained to the students the purpose of the study and stated that student participation was purely voluntary and that all responses would be confidential and anonymous. It was explicitly declared that their responses would have no influence on their clerkship grades. Students were asked to answer the questionnaire during some academic session and not to discuss the statements among themselves to stay away from peer group influence. The study was approved by the ethics committee of Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS).

2.2 . Participants

Between February, 2009, and July, 2009, 189 medical students who were invited to participate in the study.

2.3 . Measure

A self-administered questionnaire was used. The questionnaire was composed of two parts. The first part consisted of the questions about background information on specific subjects. Background information consisted of participant age, gender, rotation site, and history of personal contact with mentally ill patient, training environment, and perceived media role.

The second part examined participants' Attitudes Toward Mental Illness (ATMI). This part was adopted from two questionnaires and was validated and used in other studies in Iran [23-27]. The questionnaire consisted of 22 items divided into five categories: 1) attitude toward social relations in people with mental illness (six questions), 2) willingness to self-disclosure regarding mental illness (three questions), 3) attitude toward treatment of mental illness (six questions), 4) attitude toward etiology of mental illness (three questions), and 5) stereotypic attitude toward people with mental illness (four questions). The scoring was on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) with a higher score suggesting a more favorable attitude. The scoring on some of the items was reversed to avoid response bias. To establish content validity of the Persian version of ATMI, the questions were adapted based on the opinions of five experts (four psychiatrists and a clinical psychologist) and was adjusted in terms of social and cultural conditions. The internal consistency of the questionnaire, measured using Cronbach's alpha, was 0.86.

2.4 . Data Analysis

Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, V.16). The student’s t tests and one-way ANOVA were used to examine the difference ATMI score between two genders and across different schools, respectively. Correlation analyses were computed by using Pearson correlation coefficients.

4.1 . Category 1 (Social Relations with People Affected by Mental Illness)

In spite of overall optimism of Iranian medical students about people with mental illness, they showed intolerant attitude toward close relationships with this people. Only one-fourth of the students stated that would be ready to live or work in the same place with a person with mental illness and less than one-fifth of them would be ready to be a close friend to a patient with mental illness. In other studies, 51.8-60.3% of medical students did not accept to be willing to work on a job with former patients [18, 28] whilst only 9.6% of the students accepted to be willing to rent a room in their home to former patients [18] and 51.9% of the students would not accept a former mental patient as a close friend [28]. Considering unfavorable students’ attitudes concerning social relations with people affected by mental illness that can potentially influence patient-physician relationship at the future, it is essential that continued efforts devoted to find some ways to improve the students’ views of this category.

4.2 . Category 2 (Willingness to Self-Disclosure Regarding Mental Illness)

The present study revealed that 73.8% of the students declared they disagreed with the item “I'll feel ashamed if anyone of my close relatives is mentally ill”. In a study in Japan, 38.6% of the medical students showed similar opinion [18]. It could indicate that Iranian society may be more tolerant than some other Eastern countries.

4.3 . Category 3 (Treatment of Mental Illness)

Around 80% of students in our study thought people with mental illness are treatable and medications are effective in treating people with mental illness. Other studies reported less favorable opinion about treatment of people with mental illness in medical students and doctors [18, 28]. It could indicate that Iranian tomorrow’s doctors may have more positive opinion about psychiatric treatment than their counterparts in some other Eastern countries.

4.4 . Category 4 (Etiology of Mental Illness)

Contrary to the result of other studies from Middle East and Africa [28, 29], beliefs in supernatural causes of mental illness was rare among Iranian medical students. Although we did not directly evaluate biogenetic causal attributions of mental illness among the medical students, their response to the questions 4 and 17 may indirectly indicate the kind of attribution. Therefore, it may be assumed that most of the students had biogenetic causal attributions of mental illness. However, it is expected that biological or genetic models of mental illness may increase tolerance towards people with mental illness by reducing the stigma and rejection, two recent reviews concluded that biogenetic causal models were not associated with more tolerant attitudes or better social acceptance [30, 31].

4.5 . Category 5 (Stereotypic Attitude Toward People with Mental Illness)

The majority of students in the present study disagreed with that all patients with mental illness must be taken care of in hospitals; however, the medical students were trained in teaching hospitals rather than community-based services. This view is comparable to Mino and colleagues (2000) [18] but it is in contrast with dominant opinion of students from other country who stated that facilities for mental health care should be located away from the community [29]. Also, less than 5% of Iranian medical students considered people with mental illness as dangerous. It is noticeably less than those reported by Adewuya and Oguntade (2007) of 70.5% [28].

In general, as Jorm and colleagues (1997) found that younger members of health professionals tend take a broader view about mental illness [32] and it may represent a possible cohort effect, Iranian medical students showed favorable attitude toward mental illness.

4.6 . Mental Hospital vs. General Hospital

To our best knowledge, there is no published study on influence of psychiatry clerkship at a mental hospital compared to a general hospital on students’ attitude toward mental illness. However, it is found that the effect of hospital experience may be positive or negative depending on the environment atmosphere where experience occurs [33, 34].

4.7 . Close Personal Contact with People with Mental Illness before Entering Clerkship

We found no relationship between close personal contacts with people affected by mental illness before clerkship/or direct experience with a family member with mental illness and attitude toward mental illness. Our finding was in line with some previous studies [29, 35-37] ; however, several studies are shown personal contact with people affected by mental illness might positively influence attitude of public, generally, and students, specifically, toward mental illness [28, 38-45].

4.8 . Age

We found no association between age and ATMI total score. This finding was in keeping with the finding of several studies in general population [2, 41] and in medical students [29] but discordant with the results of other studies in general population [2, 39]. It may be due to narrow variance of age variable among medical students because they come from the same cohort.

4.9 . Gender

According to the present study, there was no difference between two genders in terms of ATMI total score. Angermeyer and Dietrich (2006) in a review showed that the results of previous studies concerning influence of gender on public’s attitude toward mental illness are quite inconsistent [2]. In a recent systematic review of population-based studies, Holzinger and colleagues (2012) concluded that women do not seem to display more positive attitudes than men towards people with mental illness, with a few exceptions. Women are more likely to approve psychosocial approach to mental illness than men and it also seems that women are more ready to suggest professional help than men [46]. In line with our finding in medical students, Al-Adawi and colleagues (2002) found no association between students’ attitudes toward mental illness and gender [29]; however, greater social distance was associated with female gender in medical students in another study [42].

4.10. Students’ Perceptions about Influence of Media on their Attitudes Toward Mental Illness Before Entering

The present study showed that the medical students thought that movies were on the top of influential media on shaping their attitudes toward mental illness. We did not find similar studies to be able to compare our result with them. However, the present study could not determine to which direction and how much students’ attitudes have been influenced by media, specifically movies, and then, to how much psychiatry clinical rotation could change pre-clerkship attitudes toward mental illness.

4.11 . Limitations and Implications

The results of present study should be interpreted in the light of its limitations. We did not assess the medical students’ attitude toward mental illness before entering psychiatry rotation. Thus, it was not possible to evaluate influence of our psychiatry clerkship on Iranian medical students’ opinion about mental illness. Moreover, the findings of the present study might be influenced by the students’ attitude before entering clerkship. If the students had more favorable attitudes before the course, their attitudes could have been less influenced by passing the clerkship. The results of previous studies concerning impact of psychiatry rotation on attitude toward mental illness are inconsistent. Several studies are shown positive effect of psychiatry rotation on medical students’ opinion about mental illness [14, 18, 35, 47]; however, the findings of other studies showed no impact [37, 48, 49]. It is proposed that a future study could be done to compare medical students’ attitude toward mental illness before and after a clinical course in psychiatry, not only by using observational design but also by conducting interventional design to explore new methods that may influence students’ attitude more, and to compare with a control group. In addition, a longitudinal study would be better to assess the impact of any educational intervention on the medical students’ attitude of mental illness and on their future professional behavior in real practice, as the same sample would then be followed up over a longer period.

Another limitation of present study is the absence of follow-up to see if positive attitudes toward mental illness remain over time. As Baxter and colleagues (2001) showed the positive change that takes place in medical students' attitude towards mental illness after psychiatry training may be transient and decay over the time [50]. Thus, longitudinal studies should be appreciated to assess the persistence of favorable attitude toward mental illness.

As Singh and colleagues (1998) mentioned questionnaire per se may not truly assess attitudes and its impacts on behavior in real practice since students may give responses that are supposed to give a correct impression of themselves [14]. Moreover, there is diversity across different studies regarding measures using to assess attitude toward mental illness. In addition, these measures are divided into diverse categories; however, many inter-connections exist between the categories, and there is sometimes obscurity in judging which is the most suitable to use in categorizing a subscale [51]. In addition, the present study questionnaire could not differentiate students’ attitude toward various mental illness such as schizophrenia and depression. It is possible there is diversity among medical students in terms of their opinion about different psychiatric disorders. There are other limitations such as small sample size, and confined to three schools that may cause inadequate power to detect possible associations between different variables and may not to generalize the study results to all Iranian medical students, respectively.