Assess the Attitude Towards Mental Illness Among Nurses Working in Selected Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Mental health is an urgent concern in India as every sixth Indian needs mental health help as reported by a recent National Mental Health Survey done by Gururaj in the year 2016.  Further, while 20% of Indians suffer from a mental illness, only 10-12% of them seek help from mental health professionals mainly due to ignorance, stigma and discrimination that largely prevail in Indian community. The study aimed to assess the attitude towards mental illness among nurses and to associate the attitude towards mental illness among nurses working in selected tertiary care hospitals with background selected variables. A non-experimental descriptive research design was used in this study. A purposive sampling technique was used to select the samples and 400 samples were taken for the study. The majority of the nurses have negative 310 (77%) attitudes towards mental illness and only 90(23%) of them have positive attitudes towards mental illness. The mean value of attitude is 59.59 with a standard deviation of 4.94. There is no significant association was found between attitudes toward mental illness among nurses working in selected tertiary care hospitals with background variables at p<0.05.  The study results recommend initiating training programs for the nurses aimed at promoting positive attitudes and making them sensitive to the needs of mentally ill patients.