Knowledge and attitude of nurses regarding mental illness

Abstract

Although recent advances in psychiatry have increased our understanding towards psychiatric disorders, many people are unaware about mental illness and its treatment. The negative attitude is known hindrance of providing quality service to mental ill people. The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge and attitude about mental illness among nurses. The study was carried out in chitwan medical college, Bharatpur, Nepal. One hundred nurses working in different departments were the study population. A structured questionnaire was provided to the nurses for their responses. It was a purposive, descriptive study with 100 respondents of more than 2 years clinical experience. Almost all (99%) respondents mentioned that not all mentally ill are mad. Majority mentioned biochemical disturbances (99%) and genetic (51%) as cause of mental illness respectively. Respondents expressed their faith in psychiatrist (86%) in faith healers. This study revealed that there was overall adequate knowledge and positive attitude towards mentally ill people among the nurses.

Knowledge and perceptions of Indian primary care nurses towards mental illness

“…Therefore, the educational programs should aim at changing prejudice and negative beliefs. These findings were comparable to a study conducted in Nepal (19) None the less, indicating women held positive attitudes towards persons with mental illness. The subjects with higher professional qualification were found to have adequate knowledge as the mean score was higher than ANMs (11.33±1.12) and significant difference was noted (t=-3.53, p<0.01).…”

“…The mean score 10.88(1.58, SD) on knowledge questionnaire suggests that 91% of the subjects in the present study were found to have adequate knowledge on etiology of mental illness. While these findings were supported by earlier research conducted among nurses, (19) on the contrary, only 50% of nurses from Ethiopia had adequate knowledge. (20) Yet, it cannot be ignored that 27.8% and 11 % of the nurses in the current study, believed that mental illness is a communicable disease and mental illness occurs due to fate or karma.…”

Knowledge, attitude, and practice towards mental illness service provision and associated factors among health extension professionals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

“…Among the study participants involved in this study only 21.5% had a favorable attitude towards mental illness. When compared to other studies, it was lower than the study conducted in Addis Ababa, 44.2% [8], Chitwan, Nepal, 76.5% [11], Nigeria, 43.2% [19], and Kenya, 29.4% [12]. The possible explanation for this result might be the relatively low knowledge of urban health extension professionals on the subject matter, low exposure to mental illness service provision and cultural difference.…”

“…According to this study, 44.0% of the study participants had adequate knowledge, when compared to different studies conducted on similar study participants, the result of this study was lower than a study conducted in Addis Ababa, 50% [8], Jimma Zone, 89%, [11] and Chitwan, Nepal, 70% [15]. However, it was higher than the study conducted in Kenya among staffs in general medical facilities which was 34.2% [12].…”

Attitude towards mental illness among doctors and nurses in a tertiary care centre, Pondicherry, India

“…The positive attitude statements from the scale with explanations were distributed to all departments to all doctors and staff nurses after study in order to bring about a change in their attitude in future. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Limitations of this study was inclusion of control group could have refined the study further. For each statement, Likert scale 1 and 2 only were taken as positive scores which might have reduced the overall cut off score to ≤68 and might have overestimated negative attitudes.…”