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Medical Student Attitudes Towards People with Mental Illness in China: A Qualitative Study

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Abstract

Stigma towards people with mental illness is a worldwide concern. A five-nation survey of medical student attitudes towards people with mental illness recently reported far lower levels of social acceptance among Chinese medical students compared to those from the US, Brazil, Ghana, and Nigeria. This qualitative study presented recent Chinese medical school graduates with probes based on questions used in the aforementioned cross-national study to elicit their views of factors underlying the negative attitudes towards social acceptance of people with mental illness. One-hour interviews were conducted with twenty psychiatry residents in June, 2016. Of 241 coded responses concerning negative attitudes, 51.5% were coded as reflecting fear of violent behavior, 22.8% as loss of face (i.e. shame from interpersonal associations), 17.0% lowered social status, 4.98% nonconforming social behavior, and 3.73% the heritability of mental illness. Low levels of social acceptance of individuals with mental illness among medical students in China are largely related to fears of violence of and loss of face. Understanding the attitudes of medical students may inform efforts to reduce stigma through educational initiatives targeted at both medical students and the general public.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Audrey Luo

  2. The Affiliated Brain Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China

    Hongbo He

  3. Yale Medical School, New Haven, CT, USA

    Somaia Mohamed & Robert Rosenheck

  4. VA New England MIRECC, Yale Medical School, New Haven, CT, USA

    Robert Rosenheck

  5. VA Connecticut Health Care System, West Haven, CT, 06516, USA

    Robert Rosenheck

Authors
  1. Audrey Luo
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  2. Hongbo He
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  3. Somaia Mohamed
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  4. Robert Rosenheck
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert Rosenheck.

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The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

This study was approved by the Human Investigations Committee of Yale Medical School.

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Luo, A., He, H., Mohamed, S. et al. Medical Student Attitudes Towards People with Mental Illness in China: A Qualitative Study. Cult Med Psychiatry 42, 535–551 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-018-9568-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-018-9568-9

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