Undergraduate nursing students’ attitude towards mental illness: a cross sectional study

Authors

  • Ravi C. Sharma Department of Psychiatry, Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India
  • Dinesh D. Sharma Department of Psychiatry, Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India
  • Neeraj Kanwar Department of Psychiatry, Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India
  • Pankaj Kanwar Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, India
  • Santosh Manta Department of Psychiatry, Sister Nivedita Govt. Nursing College, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20175733

Keywords:

Attitude, Mental illness, Nursing students

Abstract

Background: People suffering from mental illness commonly face stigma, bias, and discrimination by general public. Health care professionals are not immune to social biases and share the public's attitude meted out to people with mental illness. Nursing students are future health manpower. There are only few studies conducted on medical students’ attitude towards people with mental illnesses in India. We have planned this study to examine the undergraduate nursing students’ attitude towards people suffering from mental illnesses.

Methods: It was a cross-sectional study. A total of 220 undergraduate nursing students were selected randomly with their consent to complete the Attitude Scale for Mental Illness (ASMI).

Results: The nursing students were found to have a significant positive attitude towards mental illness in five of the six attitudes factors: Restrictiveness (8.42), benevolence (28.6) and stigmatization (7.3), separatism (15.6) and stereotype (9.4) However, these students had negative attitude in pessimistic predictions (12.5) domain as they rated this domain slightly on the higher side.

Conclusions: Academic education in this field must be conceptualized and planned in order to favor the change of the attitudes that includes greater utilization of those teaching strategies that challenge beliefs and assumptions and promote a commitment to provide holistic care to people with mental illness.

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Published

2017-12-23

How to Cite

C. Sharma, R., D. Sharma, D., Kanwar, N., Kanwar, P., & Manta, S. (2017). Undergraduate nursing students’ attitude towards mental illness: a cross sectional study. International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 6(1), 275–278. https://doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20175733

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Section

Original Research Articles