Psychiatry Research EG

Background Stigma is a basic component of the negative discrimination that people with mental illness experience every day. It blocks access to facilities that have been created to help people with mental illness. Furthermore, the attitudes held by people with authority (including clinical staff and officers) towards people with mental illness are likely to influence their attitude towards them and hence the experience and treatment outcome of the patients. The aim of this work is to study and compare the attitudes of Egyptian residents of different clinical specialties and house officers towards patients with mental illness. The current study aimed to study the attitudes of Egyptian medical residents and house officers towards patients with mental illness and compare between both groups. This cross-sectional comparative study was designed to assess 150 residents and 201 house officers at Ain Shams University Hospitals by using the Mental Illness Clinician Attitude Scale version 4 (MICA-4) and newly designed questions related to stigma. Results The study revealed that the scores of MICA questionnaire were significantly lower than the cut point for negative attitude in both residents and house officers (P?