Knowledge and Attitude Towards Mental Illness Among the Students of Selected Urban Colleges

Introduction: Mental illness has always been an important area of investigation among the mental health professionals as every section of society has its unique way of perception about mental illness, particularly the young generation and the college-going students.

Methods: A descriptive study design was undertaken where the sample included 500 students from selected urban colleges from I yr, II Yr and III Yr Degree courses in Arts, science and Commerce stream.

Tools used: A socio-demographic data, a self structured knowledge and attitude questionnaires were used, validated by 35 experts from the field of Mental Health Nursing, Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology and Statistics. The sampling technique adopted for the study was simple random sampling.

Results: The study found the mean knowledge score to be 17.84 with SD = 5.32 along with the mean attitude score of 75.14 with SD = 9.87. A significant positive correlation has been found between the knowledge and attitude, which is found to be statistically significant at 0.01 & 0.05 levels.

Conclusion: The study findings suggests the need of proper awareness programmes among the student community, which would help dispel any myths and misconceptions regarding mental illness, thus improving the mental health of the students and bring about an understanding and acceptance of the people with mental illness in the society.