Positive attitudes towards psychiatry among Chinese medical students

Joshua A Williams, Ni Liu, Khalid Afzal, Brian Cooper, Renslow Sherer, Ivy Morgan and Hongmei Dong

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2014, vol. 60, issue 1, 21-29

Abstract: Background and aims: Increasingly positive attitudes have been reported among young people in China towards mental illness, but little is known about Chinese medical students’ attitudes towards psychiatry, psychiatric services and patients. Methods: We administered a bilingual survey to Wuhan University medical students in the final years of their clinical training. Primary outcomes were composite scores on a 21-item attitudes toward psychiatry (ATP) survey and the number of correct responses to diagnostic questions following a series of three clinical case vignettes. Results: Mean composite score on the ATP items was 78/105 (SD = 9.6), representing overall positive attitudes among the students. Female gender and having learned about more psychiatric disorders were positively associated with a higher mean ATP score and remained so after adjustment for relevant covariates. Conclusions: Chinese medical students reported positive attitudes towards psychiatry, openness with regard to psychiatric services, and respect for psychiatric patients. Learning about a broad spectrum of psychiatric diagnoses and greater clinical contact with patients may improve overall attitudes of Chinese medical students towards psychiatry and their ability to make accurate diagnoses.

Keywords: Medical students; psychiatric training; attitudes toward mental illness; mental health in China; medical education in China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020764012467259 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:60:y:2014:i:1:p:21-29

DOI: 10.1177/0020764012467259

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().