Objective: Most sub-Saharan African countries have fewer psychiatrists than one per one million people. One possible reason could be that medical students have a negative attitude toward the specialty. The authors evaluated the attitudes toward a career in psychiatry of final-year medical students in Kumasi, Ghana, and compare these with attitudes of medical students in Spain and the United States.
Methods: Medical students were given a 28-item questionnaire on attitudes toward psychiatry, which was used in previous studies in Spain and the United States.
Results: Ghanaian students (N=94) had a fairly positive view of psychiatry, similar to those in Spain, although less positive than U.S. students. About 15% were considering psychiatry as a career option. There was evidence of significant stigmatization of patients with mental illness and psychiatrists and concern about the use of coercive detention of patients.
Conclusion: The difficulty recruiting physicians into psychiatry in Ghana, and perhaps other African countries, is unlikely to be due to negative attitudes and may be due to a lack of opportunity to train in psychiatry.