Attitudes Toward Psychiatry as a Prospective Career among Medical Students in Their Pre-Clinical Year in China- A Pilot Study

Abstract

ObjectiveTo understand the attitudes among medical students in China toward different medical specialties and to find the factors that influenced their choice of career in psychiatry.MethodsA questionnaire was developed and administered to 287 medical students at the Xiangya Medical College, Central South University in Changsha, China. All the students were asked to rate the importance of five possible factors in choosing a specialty as a vocation: the ability to help patients, interesting and challenging work, lifestyle factors, financial reward, and prestige.ResultsStudents reported negative perceptions of psychiatry in regard to all five possible factors that were important in choosing a specialty as a vocation, especially in financial reward and prestige.ConclusionsMedical students in China have negative attitudes toward psychiatry as a career. Some negative beliefs about psychiatry seem to be due to erroneous or insufficient knowledge that could be corrected during the course of medical education. Some negative attitudes were unlikely to be completely changed until the mental health system in China improves.

Stigmatizing Attitudes Towards Mental Disorders Among Non-Mental Health Professionals in Six General Hospitals in Hunan Province

“…The mental health-related stigma could further compound the shortage of mental health resources. Furthermore, in our previous study, less than 2% of medical students chose psychiatry as their first choice of career due to negative attitudes about psychiatry (50). Mental health resources, especially human resources, are inadequate worldwide, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries (51).…”

Knowledge, attitudes and practices in mental health of health professionals at the end of their curriculum in Burkina Faso: A pilot study

“…Lack of knowledge and lack of clinical experience with patients lead to students’ negative attitudes and stigmatization towards people with mental disorders (Kato, Balhara, Chawla, Tateno, & Kanba, ). Lack of clinical experience in a mental health department would not motivate medical health professionals to specialize in Psychiatry (Wang, Xiang, Hao, & Liu, ). Most of the health professionals’ attitudes are based on their experience (Hugo, ).…”

Career choice and influential factors among medical students majoring in psychiatry in China

“…Two authors reviewed the survey items. Based on a literature review [7,9,13,, they identified 36 student-level factors, including demographic factors, matriculation reasons, and experiential items, that were hypothesized to be associated with the psychiatry career choice (Online Resource 4). Logistic regression analysis was used as the original analysis for variable screening, with the selection of either psychiatry or any other specialty as a career choice as the binary dependent variable.…”

“…Based on statistics from the Psychiatry Teaching Steering Committee, the rate of a psychiatry career choice was around 30%. A few studies have evaluated attitudes toward psychiatry and mental illness among Chinese medical students [5][6][7][8][9][10], but studies on psychiatry as a career choice have been scarce. One study showed that approximately 1.6% of fourth-year medical students in Xiangya Medical School chose psychiatry as a career [9].…”