Proper attitudes by medical students can impact on the quality of health care delivered to their patients. Negative attitude toward person with mental illness may form a barrier for patients to receive appropriate care.

The aim of this study is to determine the attitudes of medical students toward mentally ill and to investigate impact of medical education on attitude among medical students.

The study comprised 200 clinical &135 basic science medical students at the medical school of Shiraz university who agreed to participate. Community Attitudes towards the Mentally Ill questionnaire were used to assess attitude toward mental illness The tool focuses on measuring levels of authoritarianism, benevolence, social restrictiveness and community mental health ideology.

There was little difference in attitudes about mental illness Between basic science- and clinical medical student except for restrictiveness (p value< 0.05).This difference also was noted between male and female student with higher restrictiveness in female students . 70% of our student have familiarity with someone who have mental illness . Pearson correlation test show significant correlation between familiarity with mental illness and community ideology sub dimension p value< 0.009.

Our sample overly have positive attitude about mental illness ,but there is no significant positive correlation between years of studying in medical university and attitude about mental illness . Medical school need to develop new curricula to convey scientific information to students and implementing and evaluating suitable programs leading to appropriate attitude development.