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

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.