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Which Medical Students are Negative Toward Psychiatry?

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Abstract

The present study assessed the relation between medical students personality variables and their attitudes toward psychiatry. Contrary to several previous reports, warm and interpersonally oriented students had neither systematically positive or negative attitudes. However, confident and assertive students viewed psychiatry as ineffectual and dependent; passive students perceived psychiatry as inducing anxiety in patients. The results suggest that the instrumentally oriented students might benefit from clerkships that emphasize the functional as opposed to the affective-expressive while the easily threatened students require reassurance and therapeutic teaching.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vanderbilt School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

    Joseph D. LaBarbera PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, (Psychology) &  Pauline Rabin MD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Medical Student Training in Psychiatry)

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  1. Joseph D. LaBarbera PhD
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  2. Pauline Rabin MD
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LaBarbera, J.D., Rabin, P. Which Medical Students are Negative Toward Psychiatry?. Acad Psychiatry 8, 93–96 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399916

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399916

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