A longitudinal study on the impact of mental health internship in reducing negative attitudes of medical students towards people with mental disorders

ABSTRACT Objective To evaluate and measure the effects of mental health internship on Medicine Students (MS) attitudes towards people with mental illness (PMI). Methods MS was submitted to an attitude questionnaire previously and after the mental health internship. Their attitudes were measured inside five factors: (F1) “social acceptance of PMI”, (F2) “normalizing roles for PMI”, (F3) “non-belief in supernatural causes for mental illness”, (F4) “belief in bio-psychosocial causes for mental illness,” and (F5) “near contact with PTM”. T-tests were used to evaluate factor differences, confounding factor were analyzed by ANOVA and correlations through Pearson’s correlation test. Results 74 of 85 students responded. There were a significant reduction in four factors (F1, p