Attitude of Iranian medical specialty trainees toward providing health care services to patients with mental disorders

Abstract

IntroductionThe stigma of mental illness has a negative impact on the diagnosis and treatment of these disorders. Considering the high prevalence of mental illness, the attitude of medical specialists toward mental disorders, who are front liners in diagnosing and treating these patients, is critical. Therefore, we examined the attitude of Iranian medical specialty trainees toward providing health care services for patients with mental illness.MethodsWe included 143 residents in the fields that have the most interactions with patients with mental disorders, including internal medicine, surgery, neurology, cardiovascular diseases, and psychiatry. A demographic checklist, as well as the opening minds scale for health care providers stigma assessment questionnaire, was provided, which measures five dimensions of improvement, social responsibility, social distance, exposure, and other (such as risk) in health care providers toward delivering the healthcare services to patients with mental disorders.ResultsThe mean score of stigma for mental illness in medical specialty trainees was 61.36 ± 4.83 out of 100. Psychiatric residents have the least stigmatizing attitude (58.38 ± 3.54), and internal medicine and cardiology residents have the highest score, respectively, (62.96 ± 6.05, 62.45 ± 3.80). As for comparing subscales between specialties, only the social responsibility subscale showed a significant difference, with psychiatry having less stigma toward social responsibility (12.93 ± 2.01) than cardiology (15.09 ± 1.50) trainees.ConclusionThe attitude of medical specialty trainees toward providing health care services for patients with mental illness is not uniform; internal medicine and cardiology residents have more stigmatizing attitude, while psychiatric residents have less stigmatizing attitude. It seems that not every contact could be useful in making a better attitude toward mental illness, but it needs preconditions, like a structured contact that leads to positive outcomes. Anti-stigma interventions are needed to improve the attitude of medical specialty trainees toward providing health care services to patients with mental illness.

Self-Stigma, insight and influencing factors among Iranian neurotic psychiatric outpatients

“…We would recommend using different study designs as well as a greater sample size which can carry out more precise results, especially for patients with a different spectrum of disorders. Meanwhile, our study showed that stigma has a signi cant relationship with the need to consume medication, hence we recommend two strategies for this worrisome matter; First a follow-up program in a timely and orderly manner for patients with higher levels of stigma that will lead to better medication adherence; second, an anti-stigma program that can simultaneously focus on help-seeking and better attitudes toward mental illness (5). Lastly, with the matter still being a public health issue we highly recommend early identi cation of high-risk patients such as the ones with higher levels of internalized stigma and negative attitudes towards their mental illnesses which can lead to prompt management and better quality of life (40).…”

“…Stigma is not a personal issue or part of the illness; in general, stigma is a state of separation manifested in society's negative attitudes towards people who have distinctive features from the main body of the society (1); this attitude is present towards patients with different disorders and in particular, mental health disorders (2,3). Different groups of people, including healthcare providers, share this negative attitude (4,5).…”

The stigma towards mental illness: Portuguese validation of the Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Healthcare Providers (OMS-HC)

“…So, considering this need the Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Healthcare Providers (OMS-HC) was the first scale developed to assess stigma toward mental illness specifically among healthcare professionals ( Kassam et al, 2012 ). A team of researchers from the University of Calgary in Canada developed this scale, and, since then it has been validated in several countries, including Malaysia ( Fernandez et al, 2016 ), Singapore ( Chang et al, 2017 ), Italy ( Destrebecq et al, 2018 ), Pakistan ( Laraib et al, 2018 ), Bahrain ( Al Saif et al, 2019 ), Chile ( Sapag et al, 2019 ), Hungary ( Őri et al, 2020 ), Germany ( Zuaboni et al, 2021 ), Iran ( Movahedi et al, 2022 ) and Brazil ( Carrara et al, 2022 , 2023 ).…”

The attitude of Iranian directors and screenwriters toward patients with mental disorders in comparison with a general population group

“…Exaggeration or sensationalization of mental disorders leads to perpetuating harmful stereotypes and misconceptions. In addition, psychiatrists and psychologists are often shown to lack empathy for their patients and offer ineffective or even harmful treatments [4][5][6][7][8].…”