Background Stereotyped cognitive schemes are the main cause of casting out patients with mental illness. Educational psychiatry programs have to be re-evaluated as medical students often have misconceptions about psychiatry. Objective The aim of the present study was to examine the attitude of fi fth-year medical students toward psychiatric patients and disorders, and to reveal the infl uence of psychiatric study experience on their attitudes. Participants and methods In this interventional study, 300 fi fth-year students from Ain Shams University Medical School were enrolled. Sociodemographic data sheet, Fahmy and El Sherbiny's Social Classifi cation Scale, and the Mental Illness Clinician Attitude Scale-2 were used on the fi rst and last day of a 3-week clinical psychiatric round. Results Data before and after the round were compared and showed no signifi cant change in Mental Illness Clinician Attitude Scale-2 scores among the studied sample after the psychiatric round. Only 4% of the students chose psychiatry as a future career with neutral attitude and had worse attitude after rotation. Students who had signifi cant positive attitude at the beginning of the round ended up with a signifi cantly more negative attitude, whereas those with signifi cantly negative attitudes improved at the end of the round. Conclusion Three weeks may not be suffi cient time to allow students to follow up the patients to notice their improvement as regards treatment and return to their functional baseline. Thus, students perceived mentally ill patients being untreatable. Greater emphasis on doctor-patient relationship and exposure to patients with psychiatric illness, which responds rapidly to treatment and students taking direct patient responsibility, may lead to the production of more favorable attitudes.