Is there any difference between attitude of interns toward psychiatric illness and other chronic medical conditions? A comparative study

BACKGROUND: Attitude of doctors towards specific medical conditions plays a crucial role in patient care. Internship, being the final stage in undergraduate medical students’ training, can have a bearing on the attitude they develop towards various specialties. However, there is dearth of Indian studies comparing the attitude of interns towards psychiatric illness and other chronic medical conditions. In this background, the study was conceived with the objective of comparing the attitude of interns towards psychiatric illness and other chronic medical conditions. AIMS: (1) To compare the attitude of interns towards Psychiatric illness and Diabetes Mellitus. (2) To compare the attitude of interns towards Psychiatric illness and HIV/AIDS. SETTING AND DESIGN: Conducted at Sri Siddhartha medical college, Tumakuru as a cross sectional study. METHODOLOGY: The sample for this cross sectional study comprised of 130 interns in a tertiary care teaching hospital who had completed their postings in Psychiatry. Medical Condition Regard Scale (MCRS) was used to assess the attitude of interns towards Psychiatry, Diabetes Mellitus and HIV/AIDS. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: SPSS 20 was used with Descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests to analyze the data obtained. RESULTS: There was no significant difference between the overall MCRS scores for Diabetes Mellitus and psychiatric illnesses. However, many individual items and the overall scores of MCRS were significantly higher for psychiatric illnesses when compared to those for HIV/AIDS. CONCLUSIONS: The attitude of interns towards Psychiatric illness was comparable to that towards Diabetes Mellitus. However, their attitude towards Psychiatric illness was more favorable than that towards HIV/AIDS. Further studies need to focus on the various aspects of stigma/ attitude and the effect of undergraduate medical training on those aspects.