Attitude of Nurses Students Towards The Mentally ILL Before And After Psychiatric Training Experience in Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Enugu, Nigeria

ABSTRACT 

Globally, a persistent negative attitude and social rejection of people with mental illness has prevailed throughout history in every social and religious culture. Having a mental health problem often stimulates with it a negative attitude, and such negative attitudes towards the mentally ill constitute great burden. This study aimed at assessing the attitude of nursing students towards the mentally ill before and after psychiatry training experience in Federal Neuro-psychiatric Hospital Enugu. The specific objectives were to determine: the nursing students’ attitude towards the mentally ill before psychiatric clinical experience, the nursing student’s attitude toward the mentally ill after psychiatric clinical experience, and ascertain influence of socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, type of training institution) of nursing students’ attitude toward mentally ill before and after clinical exposure. The study adopted the quasi- experimental design. The instrument for data collection was Community Attitudes towards the Mentally Ill (CAMI) scales. All the 154 nursing students were enrolled into the study owing to small sample. Data generated were analyzed using descriptive statistics, students’t- test, one way ANOVA. Probability value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. The results revealed that, majority of the respondents were in the age bracket 18- 23years, as indicated by 76 (49.4%). Regarding gender, majority 127 (82.5%) of them were female. Nursing students’ attitude towards the mentally ill before clinical experience was positive in both UNEC and UNTH as indicated by benevolence (2.75 ± 0.26) (2.68 ± 0.29) and community mental health ideology (2.71 ± 0.31) (2.73± 0.31) respectively. Nursing students’ attitude towards the mentally ill after clinical experience was also positive in both UNEC and UNTH as indicated by authoritarian (3.16 ± 0.60) (2.64 ± 0.37), benevolence (3.06 ± 0.51) (2.68 ± 0.39) respectively. Type of training institution and gender had a positive influence (p