Stigma about mental disease in Portuguese medical students: a cross sectional study

Abstract

Background: The stigma about mental disease is common in population. It's expected that medical students have enough formal education allowing to overcome the stigma. Stigma is a vicious cycle that makes it difficult to manage health providers when they get sick. Aim: To characterize the stigma about mental diseases in Portuguese sixth-year medical students. Methods: Observational cross-sectional study, involving sixth-year students of all Portuguese medical schools. We applied an online self-response questionnaire, using the preliminary version of the Attribution Questionnaire AQ-9 in Portuguese, along with sociodemographic variables. Stigma scores were calculated. We used logistic regression to estimate the effect of social determinants on stigma pattern and we analysed the correlation between the 9 variables evaluated by the AQ-9 and total stigma. Outcomes: We collected a total of 501 valid answers (69.5% females), with a median age of 24 years old. The study of stigma about mental disease in our students showed that they were available to help in the proposed clinical scenario (6.93/9.00;CI95%:6.77-7.10), if necessary using coercion for treatment (3.85;CI95%:3.63-4.07), because they felt pity (6.86;CI95%:6.67-7.06) and they perceived some kind of dangerousness (4.06;CI95%:3.84-4.28). We also found statistically significant differences in stigma in people having a personal (OR:0.498; 95%CI:0.324-0.767;P=0.002) or a familial history (OR: 0.691;95%CI:0.485-0.986,;P=0.041) of mental illness. Discussion: Our results show the importance of anti-stigma education, in order to improve medical students' attitudes towards mental disease.