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There Is a Limit to Your Openness: Mental Illness Stigma Mediates Effects of Individual Traits on Preference for Psychiatry Specialty

Objective: The widening gap between the need for mental health professionals and the low percentages of medical students pursuing a psychiatric career urges an examination of how individual traits, stigma attitudes, and related intended behaviors interact to better explain the variance in preference...

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Autores principales: Fino, Edita, Agostini, Alessandro, Mazzetti, Michela, Colonnello, Valentina, Caponera, Elisa, Russo, Paolo Maria
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6833974/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31736797
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00775
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author Fino, Edita
Agostini, Alessandro
Mazzetti, Michela
Colonnello, Valentina
Caponera, Elisa
Russo, Paolo Maria
author_facet Fino, Edita
Agostini, Alessandro
Mazzetti, Michela
Colonnello, Valentina
Caponera, Elisa
Russo, Paolo Maria
author_sort Fino, Edita
collection PubMed
description Objective: The widening gap between the need for mental health professionals and the low percentages of medical students pursuing a psychiatric career urges an examination of how individual traits, stigma attitudes, and related intended behaviors interact to better explain the variance in preferences for psychiatry as a specialty choice. Methods: Participants were second-year, preclinical medical students at Bologna University, Italy. The study consisted in completion of an online questionnaire evaluating preferences for the psychiatry specialty (one single item and a scenario-based response), personality traits (the Big Five Questionnaire), attitudes (Mental Illness for Clinicians’ Attitude scale), behaviors (Reported and Intended Behavior Scale), and fears toward mental illness (questionnaire created ad hoc). Sociodemographic data were also collected. Results: A total of 284 medical students [58.8% female, mean (SD) age 20.47 ± 1.90] completed the questionnaire. Preference for the psychiatry specialty was significantly and positively associated with openness to experience and negatively related with Mental Illness for Clinicians’ Attitude scale and Reported and Intended Behavior Scale. The full-mediation model provided good indices explaining 18% of the variance. Mental illness stigma was strongly and negatively associated with both openness to experience and preference for psychiatry, and the mediation results evidenced a positive and significant effect. Conclusions: Mental illness stigma influences medical students’ choice of psychiatry as a specialty, accounting for the effects of the openness to experience trait. Stigma awareness and reduction programs should be introduced as early as possible in medical education.
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spelling pubmed-68339742019-11-15 There Is a Limit to Your Openness: Mental Illness Stigma Mediates Effects of Individual Traits on Preference for Psychiatry Specialty Fino, Edita Agostini, Alessandro Mazzetti, Michela Colonnello, Valentina Caponera, Elisa Russo, Paolo Maria Front Psychiatry Psychiatry Objective: The widening gap between the need for mental health professionals and the low percentages of medical students pursuing a psychiatric career urges an examination of how individual traits, stigma attitudes, and related intended behaviors interact to better explain the variance in preferences for psychiatry as a specialty choice. Methods: Participants were second-year, preclinical medical students at Bologna University, Italy. The study consisted in completion of an online questionnaire evaluating preferences for the psychiatry specialty (one single item and a scenario-based response), personality traits (the Big Five Questionnaire), attitudes (Mental Illness for Clinicians’ Attitude scale), behaviors (Reported and Intended Behavior Scale), and fears toward mental illness (questionnaire created ad hoc). Sociodemographic data were also collected. Results: A total of 284 medical students [58.8% female, mean (SD) age 20.47 ± 1.90] completed the questionnaire. Preference for the psychiatry specialty was significantly and positively associated with openness to experience and negatively related with Mental Illness for Clinicians’ Attitude scale and Reported and Intended Behavior Scale. The full-mediation model provided good indices explaining 18% of the variance. Mental illness stigma was strongly and negatively associated with both openness to experience and preference for psychiatry, and the mediation results evidenced a positive and significant effect. Conclusions: Mental illness stigma influences medical students’ choice of psychiatry as a specialty, accounting for the effects of the openness to experience trait. Stigma awareness and reduction programs should be introduced as early as possible in medical education. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-10-30 /pmc/articles/PMC6833974/ /pubmed/31736797 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00775 Text en Copyright © 2019 Fino, Agostini, Mazzetti, Colonnello, Caponera and Russo http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychiatry
Fino, Edita
Agostini, Alessandro
Mazzetti, Michela
Colonnello, Valentina
Caponera, Elisa
Russo, Paolo Maria
There Is a Limit to Your Openness: Mental Illness Stigma Mediates Effects of Individual Traits on Preference for Psychiatry Specialty
title There Is a Limit to Your Openness: Mental Illness Stigma Mediates Effects of Individual Traits on Preference for Psychiatry Specialty
title_full There Is a Limit to Your Openness: Mental Illness Stigma Mediates Effects of Individual Traits on Preference for Psychiatry Specialty
title_fullStr There Is a Limit to Your Openness: Mental Illness Stigma Mediates Effects of Individual Traits on Preference for Psychiatry Specialty
title_full_unstemmed There Is a Limit to Your Openness: Mental Illness Stigma Mediates Effects of Individual Traits on Preference for Psychiatry Specialty
title_short There Is a Limit to Your Openness: Mental Illness Stigma Mediates Effects of Individual Traits on Preference for Psychiatry Specialty
title_sort there is a limit to your openness: mental illness stigma mediates effects of individual traits on preference for psychiatry specialty
topic Psychiatry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6833974/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31736797
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00775
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