Psychiatry residents provide care for individuals diagnosed with co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders (SUDs). Small studies have shown that clinicians in general possess negative attitudes towards these dually diagnosed individuals. This is a serious concern, as clinicians' stigmatizing attitudes towards individuals with mental illnesses may have a particularly potent adverse impact on treatment. The goal of this study was to examine the attitudes of psychiatry residents towards individuals with diagnoses of schizophrenia, multiple SUDs, co-occurring schizophrenia and SUDs, and major depressive disorder.
A questionnaire was sent to psychiatry residents (N = 159) around the country. It was comprised of two sections: (i) demographic information, which included information about level of training; and (ii) the 11-item Medical Condition Regard Scale (MCRS) for individuals with the four different diagnoses.
Psychiatry residents had more stigmatizing attitudes towards individuals with diagnoses of SUDs with and without schizophrenia than towards those individuals with diagnoses of schizophrenia or major depressive disorder alone. Senior residents possessed more negative attitudes towards individuals with SUDs than junior residents.
The attitudes of psychiatry residents' towards individuals with SUDs with and without schizophrenia were negative and were worse among senior residents. There were many potential reasons for these findings, including repeat negative experiences in providing care for these individuals.
The negative attitudes of psychiatry residents towards individuals with SUDs are worrisome. Future work is needed to better understand these attitudes and to develop interventions to improve them. (Am J Addict 2016;XX:1-5).
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 29 January 2017.
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#9,597,588
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Outputs of similar age from American Journal on Addictions
#12
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Altmetric has tracked 34,357,314 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 70th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,236 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.0. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 55% of its peers.
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