Attitudes towards Psychiatry among Medical Students Worldwide: A Review

Abstract

Mental disorders are very frequent nowadays, and it is considered that, i.e. Europe, the numbers of patients will more than double by 2050. At the same time, there has been a constant decline of interest among students choosing psychiatry as their specialty. Therefore, it is prone to investigate and identify the factors leading to low interest in psychiatry and compare the influence of clinical clerkship among medical students worldwide, since this is no longer just a local issue, but also a global challenge. PubMed data base was used as a source of medical literature, which was afterwards filtered through established criteria to select the eligible articles dealing with attitudes toward psychiatry among medical students. Our findings indicate that likelihood of selecting psychiatry as a career is highly influenced by student's perception of the specialty, which is in turn shaped by many factors. So far several studies have underlined importance of clinical clerkship and it's positive effect among students when choosing psychiatry as a specialty. There is highly negative opinion among medical students towards psychiatry as a career choice and completion of a practice does not necessarily lead to a change in attitudes among different populations. In consistence with previous studies, our findings confirm that there is dominant negative opinion among medical students when considering psychiatry as a career.