A STUDY TO ASSESS THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS MENTAL ILLNESS BETWEEN SECOND YEAR AND FOURTH YEAR B.Sc. NURSING STUDENTS IN SELECTED COLLEGES AT SRI GANGANAGAR

Author Name: Mr. Shakti Singh Soni

Volume: 01 &  Issue:

Country: INDIA

DOI NO.: 08.2020-52719464, DOI Link: http://www.doi-ds.org/doilink/08.2020-52719464/

Affiliation:

1. Assistant Professor cum HOD [Psychiatric] Mental Health Nursing, S.N. College of Nursing, Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, India  Corresponding                                                                                   E-Mail Id:dr.ssoni0201@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Nursing as a profession has to meet the needs and/or the problems of the society. Mental health problems are on the increase and it is imperative that all nurses be prepared to deal with people who are having mental health problems. Hence mental health nursing was incorporated into the undergraduate nursing programme with the purpose or objective of creating awareness, among nursing graduates, regarding mental disorder, and thereby developing a positive attitude towards mental illness. The present examination system emphasizes on the evaluation of change in knowledge and skill rather than attitudinal change after a prescribed course. Attitudinal change being an important objective of the mental health nursing course, the investigator had undertaken a study to compare the attitude towards mental illness, of a group of B.Sc. Nursing students who have not undergone mental health nursing course with that of another group of B.Sc. Nursing students who have completed the said course. This study reveals the effectiveness of variables like a Mental Health Nursing course, in terms of bringing out an attitudinal change in students towards mental illness. A descriptive survey approach was used for the study. Multi staged Proportionate Random Sampling was used to select the colleges and simple random sampling by lottery method was used to select the subjects. Opinion about Mental Illness (OMI) scale by Cohen and Strewing was used to collect the data. The domains covered are namely Authoritarianism, Benevolence, Mental Health Ideology, Social Restrictiveness, and Interpersonal Etiology which measures the attitude towards mental illness. On the OMI scale, the subjects respond to each item by checking one of the six alternatives: Strongly agree, Agree, Not sure but probably agree, Not sure but probably disagree, Disagree, Strongly disagree. The tool was administered to 100 second year B.Sc. Nursing students and 100 fourth year nursing students. The collected data was analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics. Majority 99% of the second year students and 96% of the fourth year students belonged to the completed age group of sixteen to twenty one years at the time of admission. Most of the subjects (78%; 89% respectively) belonged to Sikh religion. Less than half (39%) of the both groups had previous exposure with mental illness. (93%) of the fourth year students felt that mentally ill people need some amount of restriction, even after the completion of mental health nursing course.

Key words: Mental illness, Attitude, Assess