Australian undergraduate nursing students’ opinions on mental illness

Abstract

Objective: To determine second year Bachelor of Nursing students’ opinions on mental illness and relationship with demographic data for the purpose of curriculum development.

Design: The present study is a pilot study for a larger project which will investigate undergraduate nursing student opinions across the duration of their undergraduate degree at an Australian university. The ‘Student Opinions of Mental Illness Scale’, a 53 point Likert type questionnaire was used in a sample of second year nursing students to investigate their opinions of mental illness.

Setting: Metropolitan nursing school in Victoria, Australia.

Subjects: 133 second year undergraduate Bachelor of Nursing students’.

Main outcome measures: Student opinions based on Likert responses.

Results: The study revealed that student experiences, education, employment history of country of birth may impact upon student opinions of mental illness.

Conclusion: Overall, students were found to have a generally neutral opinion about mental illness except in the sub-scale factors of benevolence, mental hygiene ideology and interpersonal aetiology where students held less positive opinions. Knowing the student populations opinions about a subject matter can assist academics to direct and focus their efforts to improve those opinions in those areas.