Mental Stigma In Health

The world health organization reports that there is 80% of the population who are suffering with mental disorders belongs to low and middle income countries. The developed countries are accounting more prevalence of mental illness but the untreated mental illness burden is high in developing countries.(1) When we come to Asia, China and India as two large populated nations (38% of world population) drags the attention to understand this mental, neurological, and substance use disorders. From 1990-2013 there was 44% increase in MNS disorders in India and it has been estimated to increase by 23% between 2013-2025.(2) According to the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010), absolute disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) because of MNS

In our society the people who are suffering with mental illness known as most stigmatized . Elliot and colleagues reports that the stigma which is associated with Mental illness creates social barrier to the Mentally ill people. They are treated differently from the normal people and excluded from the community with the perception of abnormal interaction, dangerous and also with not predictable behaviour . All these situations in society creates a challenge to the mentally ill to face not only their illness but also the community. Public stigma may leads the stress in mentally ill, which will increase psychological problems like depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. (4, 5)Stigma was explained by Thornicroft et al., with three interrelated elements as ignorance, prejudice and discrimination. This stigma associated with persons with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) causes discrimination in India. By treating the mental illness clinically we can observe the reduction in associated stigma.(6) The unipolar major depression was accounted as major cause of disease burden among women in

The clinical training about psychiatric disorders may lead to influence the attitude of medical students and boost them to pick psychiatry as a career choice.(7, 9)The 26 studies from 19 countries provided that the clerkship have been used as a good platform for medical students and others involved in clinical teaching , which promoted psychiatry as a career and positive attitudes towards psychiatry. The clinical trainings increased the positive attitude about psychiatry and created mixed impact about choosing psychiatry as a career.(10)In a study in North America, observed the prevalence of negative attitudes about psychiatry before the formal medical training programme.(11)
Knowledge about the negative attitudes towards mentally ill and psychiatry will be the major contributor to provide better mental health policies, treatment methods and training programmes for the medical students. present study aimed to observe the impact of clinical trainingof medical students towards psychiatric disorders.