Attitude of Khorramabad high school students towards psychiatric disorders

Introduction: In the recent years different studies have been performed to determine attitude of different groups of the society towards psychiatric disorders , that their results could develop positive changes to improve the attitude of society with proper planning in this respect. Materials & Methods: This descriptive cross – sectional study has designed to determine the attitude of 600 high school students (301 girls and 299 boys) to psychiatric disorders. The samples were chosen using multistage randomized sampling method. Data collecting tool was a questionnaire including students , demographic characteristics and their attitude measurement , then data were analyzed by SPSS software version 9.1 . Findings : Results showed that 58.8% of the students had negative attitude and 4.2% had positive attitude to psychiatric disorders . Statistical test (T.test) didn,t show any relationship between gender and kind of attitude . Relationship between students , grade and type of attitude was statistically significant (P<0.05). 54% of the students believed that parents inattention to their children and 46.3% believed that physical punishment by parents or school staff could effect on occurrence of psychiatric disorders . 90% of the students interested in receiving education by psychiatrist or psychologist in their schools . Conclusion: Results of this study show that high school students, attitude in Khorramabad city to psychiatric disorders is negative . It seems that with exact perception of this problem and proper planning we can develop a positive change in students, attitude to psychiatric disorders and take effective steps to improve mental health of the adolescents .