THE EFFECT OF PSYCHIATRIC EDUCATION ON THE ATTITUDE OF MEDICAL STUDENTS OF GUILAN UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES TOWARD PSYCHIATRY

Introduction: While many medical students have a special talent in psychiatry, attracting them to this specialty is a problem. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of psychiatric education on the attitude of medical students on psychiatric patients. Method: In this observational study, 200 medical externs and interns were recruited. Before and after attending the 4-week psychiatry education course, the subjects were asked to express their attitude, knowledge, and experiences concerning psychiatry by completing the attitudes toward psychiatry (ATP-30) and the 6-item psychiatric experience, attitudes, and knowledge (PEAK-6) scales. Twenty-six subjects didn’t meet inclusion criteria or answered incompletely to the questionnaires Data were analyzed by t-test and paired t-test. All statistical assays were performed with SPSS19. Results: The average age of participants was 24.86 ± 1.85 years.  Of the 174 students who were finally evaluated, 84 were externs (25 male, 59 female) and 90 were interns (35 male, 55 female). A significant statistical difference was found between the mean scores of PEAK-6 among the students before and after psychiatric education (P< 0.001). However, we couldn’t reveal a significant difference between ATP-30 scores before and after education (P = 0.25). Conclusion: We showed a significant difference between the mean scores of PEAK-6 not ATP-30 in the medical students before and after psychiatry course. It may be due to better sensitivity of the PEAK-6 in the detection of changes in attitudes toward psychiatry. We recommended larger studies to discover predicting factors lead to an improvement in attitudes toward psychiatry.