Attitude and Knowledge of Nursing Students toward Mental Health Issues

Abstract

Background: Nursing is considered one of the important professions of expressing and integrating psychiatric reforms. Many factors including workflow, understanding, practice, interpersonal connections and instruction are considered as an essential component of the organic paradigm when studying mental health knowledge and attitude in nursing. The current study aims to understand the opinions, attitude and knowledge of nursing students related to mental health issues. 

Methodology: A cross-sectional study including 50 nursing students from Koohi Goth Women Hospital, Karachi-Pakistan was conducted from April 2022 to May 2022. To know about the opinions attitude and knowledge of those students toward mental health issues, the Opinions about Mental illness (OMI) scale is used. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 22.0.

Results: A total of 50 female nursing students participated in the study. The mean age of the study participants was 19.88 ± 1.57 years. Opinions about mental illness and its associated response of nursing students varies with respect to their thoughts, and perceptions.

Conclusion: It is concluded that clinical placement in the nursing area is now necessary to achieve the benefits and that classroom instruction alone is insufficient to minimize stigma among nursing students. Since the treatment of patients with mental illness may be negatively impacted by nursing students' attitudes toward such patients. To ensure that students are exposed to both psychiatric nursing theory and clinical practice during their initial years of nursing school, it is imperative that nursing curricula around the world be improved.