ATTITUDES OF MEDICAL STUDENTS TOWARDS THE USE OF MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES AND OBSTACLES FACED BY THEM

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES Mental health problems affect a person’s mental as well as physical abilities. The medical community is considered to be free of mental disorders, but this is not true in practice. Medical students suffer from illnesses like other students. There is also a high prevalence of stigma among medical students regarding mental illnesses. Therefore, in this study, we wanted to assess medical students’ attitudes toward using mental healthcare services and the obstacles they face in accessing mental health facilities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Peshawar. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted among medical students in Peshawar. A questionnaire-based online survey was used to collect data through Google Forms. Our sample size was 197. Data analysis was done using the IBM SPSS Version 20, and MS Excel Version 2010 was used to make graphs and figures. RESULTS In our study, 197 medical students participated voluntarily. The attitude of the majority of the medical students (68%) towards the use of mental health services was negative, while the rest (32%) showed a positive attitude. The obstacles with the highest mean value of 11.99 were attitudinal. Some other important obstacles were a lack of awareness about the availability of mental health services, stigma, confidentiality concerns, and fear of documentation. CONCLUSIONS Our study findings showed that the majority of the participants had negative attitudes towards seeking mental health services. And the most important barrier to getting medical assistance was the attitudinal barrier. KEYWORDS Mental health, mental illnesses, stigma, medical students, depression, mental health services, obstacles