Medical students' attitudes toward psychiatry in a Korean medical college

ABSTRACT

One hundred fifty four senior medical students responded to a questionnaire regarding attitudes toward psychiatry. A majority of students were favorable about psychiatric education, psychiatric consultation, and psychoanalysis. Students with more interest in psychiatry as a career showed both positive and negative views about psychiatry. They were more aware of psychiatry's drawbacks psychiatrists' low income and other physicians' criticism. Future surgeons were more negative about psychiatry than were other physicians. Psychiatric programs should be organized not only for improving the negative views of the students who are choosing psychiatry, but for enhancing positive views of those who will not enter psychiatry. From this perspective, consultation-liaison psychiatry deserves an expansion of its role in the clinical clerkship.