Medical students' attitudes toward psychiatry at a teaching institute in North India: A qualitative pilot study

Abstract

Background: Medical students must embrace psychiatry and psychiatric illnesses with a positive outlook if we are to bridge the massive treatment gap for psychiatric illnesses. The opinions of medical students toward psychiatry have been investigated in several quantitative research carried out in India. Qualitative research is lacking, making it difficult to comprehend students' perspectives. Hence, we created this qualitative study. Methods: We conducted online one-on-one in-depth interviews with three final-year students and two interns in this pilot study. The data were examined using content analysis. In addition, the most frequent codes were found using word cloud analysis. Results: Participants reported that students would get more knowledge about psychiatry if it is made a compulsory examination subject in the MBBS. Conclusion: The preliminary findings suggest that medical graduates mostly perceive psychiatry as a promising branch and feel that psychiatry as a branch will get its due importance if it is made a major subject in the medical curriculum.