Publication:

A survey of early career psychiatrists’ of India towards homosexuality

Background Attitude of today’s early career psychiatrists (ECPs), those who have qualified as psychiatrists in the past 7 years, will have a bearing on how homosexuality will be perceived in the coming decades. Hence a study was planned to assess these attitudes of ECPs towards homosexuality.

Methods It was an online survey based cross-sectional study. After obtaining an informed consent, the ECPs were enquired about their age, religion, gender, place of work (urban/rural), profile of work (teaching institute/clinic/hospital/community), their frequency and comfort in attending the homosexual patients and their comfort in referring their patient to a homosexual colleague. Further all the consenting ECPs were asked to fill in the heterosexual attitude towards homosexuality (HATH) scale.

Results The mean age of the study group of ECPs (n=57) was 34.07±3.12 and their male female ratio was 2.35. Most of the respondents attend 1-10 homosexual patients per year (n=49), 54 (94.73%) were comfortable handling homosexual patients and 45 (78.94%) were comfortable referring their patient to a homosexual colleague. The mean HATH score of all the ECPs was 58.51±6.67 and it did not vary across gender, place of practice (rural/urban) and profile of practice (teaching institute/clinic/hospital/community).

Conclusions The attitude of ECPs towards homosexuality is neutral and doesn’t vary across gender, place of practice or profile of practice. Most of the ECPs are comfortable handling homosexual patients and also feel comfortable referring their patients to homosexual colleagues.