POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access The attitude of non-psychiatry doctors to psychiatry and its correlates in Mysore, South India S Faizan1*, BN Raveesh1, V Anjali2, R Lakshmanagowda Sujatha1, K Sharath1 From International Conference for Healthcare and Medical Students 2011 Dublin, Ireland. 4-5 November 2011 Introduction The attitude of Non Psychiatry Doctors (NPD’s) and Non psychiatry Post Graduate Residents (NPPG’s) towards Psychiatry is crucially important because of its influence on impressionable medical students and the large num- ber of psychiatric patients who present to Non Psychiatry Doctors like General Practitioners. Since the data on the attitude of NPD’s and NPPG’s to psychiatry in India is sparse we carried out this survey in a Tertiary Govern- ment teaching Hospital in Mysore, South India. Methods A cross sectional survey of a sample consisting of 50 consenting Non Psychiatry Doctors (NPD’s) and 85 Non Psychiatry Post Graduate Residents (NPPG’s) obtained after proportional stratified random sampling based on specialty was carried out using a Pre Piloted modified version of the Attitude Toward Psychiatry (ATP-30) scale. Additional data related to their experience of Psy- chiatry as a discipline were recorded. The data collected were analyzed using the Chi square test and t test. Results The response rate of NPD’s was 72% (n = 36 from N = 50) and that for NPPG’s was 76.4% (n = 65 from N = 85). The mean score of the Modified ATP scale used was 64.19 for NPD’s and 61.76 for NPPG’s (neutral attitude score 50). NPD’s and NPPG’s who believed in the importance of psy- chiatry in the curriculum referred more patients for psy- chiatric consultations (P<0.05) ,more NPD’s than NPPG’s felt that Psychiatry helps in the development of meaning- ful relationships with patients (P<0.05). More NPD’s than NPPG’s (P<0.05), among NPD’s more recent graduates (P<0.005) and those who were younger (P<0.05) and with fewer years of practice were much more likely to believe that psychiatry has advanced considerably in recent years (P<0.05). Asked what would help them most in better detecting Psychiatric patients among patients presenting to them most NPD’s reported more time in consultations (86.11%) while most NPPG’s reported more appropriate interview techniques (76.92%). Conclusions Non Psychiatry Doctors (NPD’s) and Non Psychiatry Post- graduates (NPPG’s) at a tertiary hospital in Mysore have a moderately positive attitude to Psychiatry. NPD’s have a slightly more positive total attitude to Psychiatry as com- pared with NPPG’s. NPPG’s, while having a positive gen- eral attitude to psychiatry are more skeptical of recent advances in psychiatry and its importance as a discipline than their older mentors. This highlights the urgent need for better psychiatric education and more effective com- munication of the latest psychiatric knowledge to the younger generation of doctors. Author details 1Department of Psychiatry, Mysore Medical College and Research Institute (MMC&RI), India. 2Mysore Medical College and Research Institute (MMC&RI), India. Published: 9 July 2012 doi:10.1186/1753-6561-6-S4-P14 Cite this article as: Faizan et al.: The attitude of non-psychiatry doctors to psychiatry and its correlates in Mysore, South India. BMC Proceedings 2012 6(Suppl 4):P14. 1Department of Psychiatry, Mysore Medical College and Research Institute (MMC&RI), India Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Faizan et al. BMC Proceedings 2012, 6(Suppl 4):P14 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1753-6561/6/S4/P14 © 2012 Faizan et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 Introduction Methods Results Conclusions Author details