Medical professionals’ attitude towards Psychiatry

Volume 6 Issue 5 May 2016

More than 200 years have passed since psychiatry came into being. Conceptualized as one of the three main branches of medicine, psychiatry was to be practiced by the very best of physicians as mental illnesses deserved no less!

The use of straightjackets, locked doors and custodial asylums marks the tainted phase in the history of psychiatry. Unfortunately, despite the progress in diagnostics and therapeutics psychiatry continues to be stigmatized. People still hold prejudicial beliefs and harbor negative stereotypes resulting in discrimination of psychiatrists as well psychiatric patients.

The negative view of the general public is often evident in the form of media portrayal of patients with psychiatric illness, psychiatric treatment and even of psychiatrists. Newspapers and movies often convey psychiatric hospitals as places of forced confinement where punitive treatments are administered. The medical profession also holds psychiatry in low esteem and views it too remote from the rest of medicine and not being scientific enough. Patients with mental illness also face a lot of discrimination and difficulties in receiving health, social, and employment services. Medical students find psychiatry intellectually challenging and patients interesting, but they feel patients with psychiatric illness are unsatisfying to treat and generate less sympathy.

Despite being considered low in status, medical students find psychiatry interesting and valuable. The favorable working hours and working conditions with job satisfaction and earning potential are the main reasons for choosing psychiatry as a career. Psychiatry as a discipline is perceived to be intellectually stimulating and associated with attractive lifestyle. While these mixed views persist, the negative views of peers and medical teachers often dissuade medical students from to choosing psychiatry.

These negative images of psychiatry have prompted active anti stigma efforts by professional bodies to integrate psychiatry with the rest of medicine and to improve undergraduate recruitment rates. Enriching clinical and research exposure with enthusiastic teachers, able mentorship and positive role models can generate interest in the specialty and reduce stigma.

The continuing efforts of professional psychiatry bodies at improving the image of psychiatry and improving the teaching and clinical exposure during medical graduation may take a long time to show its effect; similar to the task of Sisiphus when he was entrusted with the responsibility of rolling up a rock uphill. But then no great task was ever easy!

We really appreciate MINDS initiative, all the contributors, readers, practitioners and dear students, for using this common platform to improve mental health literacy and subsequently to change people’s attitudes towards psychiatry, psychiatrist, and patients with psychiatric disorders. Let’s join hands for positive mental health.