Reducing Stigma Towards Psychiatry Among Medical Students

This study examines the effect of including a novel Anti-stigma Intervention Curriculum (ASIC) during a clinical rotation in psychiatry during medical school. It addresses stigma in medical students' perceptions of psychiatric patients, psychiatric illnesses and treatments, and the knowledge base of psychiatry in clinical practice. Medical students from eight hospitals were divided into intervention (one hospital, n=57) and control (seven hospitals, n=163) arms at the beginning of a 6-week psychiatry rotation throughout one academic year (2017/18). The students completed the Attitudes to Psychiatry scale (ATP-30) and the Attitudes toward Mental Illness scale (AMI) at rotation onset and conclusion. The ASIC was designed to target prejudices and stigma by direct informal encounters with people with severe mental illness (SMI) during periods of remission and recovery. Supervised small group discussions followed those encounters in order to facilitate processing of thoughts and emotions that ensued, and to discuss salient topics, including psychiatric care, evidence-based medicine in psychiatry, and the neuroscientific underpinnings of clinical psychiatry.