Medical student attitudes toward mental illness: a cross-sectional study from the Gaza Strip, Palestine

Abstract Background Mental illness is highly stigmatized compared to physical illness, often due to false beliefs and a lack of knowledge. Negative attitudes harbored by healthcare providers reflect on the care they provide and impact their patients’ outcomes and may tailor their future preferences away from the psychiatric practice. This cross-sectional study used a stratified, randomized sampling method to survey the beliefs and attitudes of students at a Palestinian medical school toward mental illness using the Beliefs Toward Mental Illness (BMI) scale. Results Overall, 79.1% of 282 participants demonstrated positive attitudes toward mentally ill patients (BMI score < 43). The highest mean score (more negative attitude) was received by the ‘dangerousness’ domain (2.75 ± 0.75), while the ‘poor social and interpersonal skills’ domain received the lowest mean score (2.47 ± 0.82). Male sex ( p = 0.031) and having a friend ( p = 0.035) or a family member ( p = 0.035 and p = 0.033, respectively) suffering from a mental illness predicted a more positive attitude toward mental illness. At the same time, age, study level, and having undergone the clinical psychiatry rotation did not impact attitude significantly. Conclusions The study shows that medical students in the Gaza Strip are not absolved from the negative stereotypes of their community toward mentally ill patients, which should be addressed systematically by health educators and medical schools in the country.