فهرست نشریات علمی دسترسی آزاد ایران

Background: Stigma of mental disorders causes a reduction in seeking help from the health care professionals and is evident across the world. Objectives: The current study aimed to compare medical students’ attitude towards mental illness after two different psychiatry clerkships in terms of the level of clinical exposure to patients with mental illness. Results: A total of 211 participants were enrolled in the study (115 female) of which 115 students (54.5%) were in low-exposure group and 96 students (45.5%) in the high-exposure group. Generally, AMI scores did not differ between the two groups and did not show any significant changes before and after the psychiatry clerkship. The only exceptions to this were AMI4 category (the concept of etiology of the mental illness), which significantly improved after the clerkship in the low-exposure (P = 0.011) and the high-exposure groups (P = 0.024), respectively. Conclusions: Exposure of medical students to patients with mental illness did not improve attitude towards mental illness and psychiatric conditions.