A randomized control trial was designed to assess the impact of two different educational interventions on medical student attitudes towards mental illness: a one-time contact based educational intervention and a 4 week mandatory psychiatry course at the University of Calgary, in Calgary (U of C), Canada.
The patient presentation component (a one-time contact based educational intervention) consisted of two, one-hour oral presentations given by patients who shared their story of having a mental illness.
This study examined the impact of a one-time contact-based educational intervention on the stigma of mental illness among medical students and compared this with a multimodal undergraduate psychiatry course at the University of Calgary, Canada that integrates contact-based educational strategies.
We conducted a cluster-randomized, "wait-list" controlled trial to evaluate the impact of a one-time contact-based educational intervention on the stigma of mental illness as measured by attitudes among medical students as compared with a multimodal undergraduate psychiatry course that integrates contact-based educational strategies.
The model was repeated using a command to adjust for clustering based on clinical correlations groups (Table 4, Model 2) which again suggested that the one-time contact based educational intervention had a significant effect (p = 0.01).
Although the evidence for one-time contact based sessions altering stigma was less robust, the course as a whole was clearly effective in improving students' attitudes towards mental illness.
Stigma scores for both groups were significantly reduced upon course completion (p < 0.0001), but were not significantly changed following the one-time contact based educational intervention in the primary analysis.
There was no statistical evidence that the one-time contact-based educational intervention had differing effects on men and women.
To determine the impact of the entire psychiatry course on the stigma of mental illness and how this compared with the one-time contact-based educational intervention, students were cluster randomized according their clinical correlation groups into either an early intervention group or the late intervention group using a computer generated random sequence.
However, one-time, contact-based educational interventions require further evaluation in this context.
In contrast to the positive impact of the course, the evidence was less robust that one-time contact-based educational sessions can alter medical student attitudes towards mental illness as an effect was only evident in post-hoc analysis.
