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Undergraduate nursing and midwifery student’s attitudes to mental illness

Hawthorne, Angela; Fagan, Ross; Leaver, Elspeth; Baxter, Jessica; Logan, Pamela; Snowden, Austyn

Authors

Angela Hawthorne

Elspeth Leaver

Jessica Baxter



Abstract

Aim
To explore levels of stigma in students of all fields of nursing and midwifery at different years, and examine the impact of exposure to people with mental illness.

Design
A cross-sectional survey was used.

Methods
The Community Attitudes to Mental Illness questionnaire was administered to all branches of student nurses (adult health, mental health, child health and learning disability) and midwives in all three years in one Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Scotland.

Results
Mental health nursing students scored significantly better on all stigma sub scales. Stigma worsened with a little professional exposure to people with mental illness but then improved with increasing exposure. Both personal and professional exposure to people with mental illness changes perceptions. The professional results follow a J-curve. Current plans for cross field experience involving short or virtual placements during student nurse training are likely to worsen stigma rather than improve it.

Citation

Hawthorne, A., Fagan, R., Leaver, E., Baxter, J., Logan, P., & Snowden, A. (2020). Undergraduate nursing and midwifery student’s attitudes to mental illness. Nursing Open, 7(4), 1118-1128. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.494

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 17, 2020
Online Publication Date Apr 14, 2020
Publication Date 2020-07
Deposit Date Apr 15, 2020
Publicly Available Date Apr 15, 2020
Journal Nursing Open
Print ISSN 2054-1058
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 7
Issue 4
Pages 1118-1128
DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.494
Keywords Attitudes, exposure, mental illness, stigma, student, nurses
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2652447

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Undergraduate Nursing And Midwifery Student’s Attitudes To Mental Illness (publisher PDF) (569 Kb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.




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