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Article Excerpt
Purposes: Attitudes toward mental illness and patients with mental illness influence the treatment they receive and decisions of policy makers. The purposes of this study were to assess Jordanian nursing students' attitudes towards mental illness, and to assess the effectiveness of teaching and contact on changing nursing students' attitudes about mental illness.
Methods: A quasi-experimental, one group pretest-posttest design was employed to test the hypotheses. Opinion about Mental Illness (OMI) Questionnaire which composed of five subscales was used to test the research hypotheses. The sample consisted of 193 Jordanian nursing students studying at the Hashemite University.
Results: results showed that (1) nursing students were found to have positive attitudes towards mental illness in four scales, (2) no significant differences were found between students' attitudes towards mental illness and demographics, (3) there was a significant difference in attitudes towards the mental illness between students who have previous contact with mental patients and those who did not, and (4) students' attitudes towards mental illness were changed positively in all scales after taking the course.
Conclusions: Attitudes about mental illness will positively changed if we correct some myths about it by increasing students' knowledge and by giving them the opportunity to contact those group of patients.
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Attitudes developed early in childhood, later on in life, society especially through the media, continues to modify them (McGurine, 1985). Attitudes have two general important functions: they guide behavior towards various goals away from adverse outcomes, and they help people to efficiently process complex information about the social world (Baron, 1992) Unfortunately, people with mental illness are often portrayed in a negative manner in the media (Link & Cullen, 1986). Changing the negative attitudes towards mental illness is very important since behavioral problems have replaced infectious disease as the major cause of morbidity and mortality among people (Bataglia, Coverdale, & Bushong, 1990).
Rosenberg and Hovland (1960) proposed model of attitudes. The model suggests that there were three types of information which were important in the formation of attitudes. Cognitive information, that is what people know of the attitude object (facts and believes) e.g. "the mentally ill are dangerous". Affective information which are the feelings/emotions that the attitude object arouses, e.g. "I'm frightened of the mentally ill". Behavioral information which are the knowledge of past, present, and future interactions with the attitude object, e.g. "I avoid the mentally ill".
Attitudes towards patients with mental illness influence the treatment they receive and decisions of policy makers (Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith, Bern & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000). Attitudes towards mental illness and patients with mental illness have been found to influence the treatment given to those patients by personnel working with them. In addition, these attitudes infleuncing policymakers when deciding on integration into the community and patient's rights (Levey & Howells, 1994; Horwitz, 1987). The negative attitudes attached to mental illness and the associated help-seeking process, is the major factor that is thought to contribute to the underutilization of mental health and mental health services.
In academia, Napoltano (1981) has indicated that five factors influenced attitudes about mental illness: classroom instruction, students' age, previous contact with mental patients, fear reduction process, and length of practicum in mental health. Negative attitudes towards individuals with mental illness may create barriers to both recovery and full integration of those patients into the community. Penn, Kommana, Mansfield, and Link (1999) identified what information on mental illness would reduce the feelings of being in danger by individuals with mental illness. The results showed that participants who were given information about schizophrenia and other mental illnesses rated these individuals as less dangerous.
Studies also have shown that there is a negative attitude associated with mental illness among personnel who work with them such as nurses and occupational therapists as well as among the general population (Levey & Howells, 1994; Socall & Holtgraves, 1992). Other studies have shown that attitudes towards mental illness were positively correlated with age and with those who have limited personal experiences with individuals with mental health disturbances. In addition, attitudes towards mental illness were negatively correlated with socio-economic status, and level of education (Brockington, Hall, Levings, & Murphy, 1993; Levey & Howells, 1994). Therefore, it is important that the population in general and nursing students in particular, who may work with this kind of patients in the future, to develop positive and realistic attitudes towards mental illness and patients with mental illness. Labeling patients with mental illness regardless of their behavior, resulted in public rejection (Socall and Holtgraves, 1992) . More research on...
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