Pharmacy students' attitudes toward mental illness at the beginning and end of the professional curriculum

Background: Various published studies have documented the attitudes of pharmacy students toward mental illness, but none has examined the changes in attitudes in the same cohort of students from the beginning to the end of the professional curriculum. Methods: Pharmacy students completed two scales-the Index of Attitudes Toward the Mentally Ill and the Whatley Social Distance Scale-at the beginning of the first year and at the end of the fourth year in the 4-year curriculum. Two independent group t-tests were used to compare mean total scores on both scales at the beginning and end of the curriculum. Results: The scales were completed by 113/125 (90%) students at the beginning and 70/123 (57%) students at the end of the curriculum. The mean score on the Index of Attitudes Toward the Mentally Ill increased from 38.8 +/- 3.5 to 39.3 +/- 4.5 (p = 0.429). The mean score on the Whatley Social Distance Scale decreased from 14.4 +/- 3.7 to 13.1 +/- 3.3 (p = 0.014). Conclusion: Pharmacy students' social distance from people with mental illness statistically significantly improved from the beginning to the end of the professional curriculum, but stigmatization did not. Pharmacy educators should continue to explore ways to improve attitudes of pharmacy students toward mental illness and to ensure that such improvements are enduring in terms of both social distance and stigmatization. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.