Attitudes of Foreign Medical Graduates and U.s. Medical Graduates Toward Mental Illness

One-hundred forty-nine applicants to two residency programs in psychiatry were surveyed with the Opinion About Mental Illness (OMI) scale. Stepwise regression analyses showed that the place where the applicant was raised was the best predictor. In comparison to those raised abroad, those raised in the United States tend to be less authoritarian-restrictive inclined, tend to report less adherence toward an unsophisticated benevolent approach, and less adherence toward an interpersonal-etiology approach. All subjects, whether raised in the United States or not, showed similar adherence to the concepts of the mental hygiene movement.