Student nurses’s stigmatising attitudes towards persons with a mental disorder in a selected school of nursing and midwifery in Rwanda

Abstract

Mental disorders (MD) contribute significantly to global burden of disease and this is the fourth leading cause of global disability. To find out the solutions of this issue, the World Health Organization recommended integration of mental health care into general health care facilities and nurses have an important role in implementation of WHO recommendation regarding the integration. A quantitative, non-experimental, descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among student nurses in a selected School of Nursing & Midwifery in Rwanda. A self-report questionnaire that included one section for demographic variables and two sections such as level of contact and the Community Attitudes towards Mental Illness - Swedish version has been used. The self-report questionnaire was distributed to available students (N=158). These student nurses were not sampled and were all included in the audit. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, the hospital rotation of students during their clinical placement and full integration of mental services within the hospital meant that all student nurses allocated at the hospital had an equal chance of caring for MHCUs. Secondly, the researcher aimed to obtain sufficient numbers for statistical power in the data analysis, which necessitated at least 100 participants (Polit & Beck, 2012).

The next step was data analysis where SPSS version 20 was used. This study revealed that participants held negative stereotypes towards persons with MD. However, the findings revealed contradictions that are suggested to be the effect of social desirability bias. Association test revealed less negatives stereotypes towards MD amongst year 4 students and students with scientific background than year 1, 2 & 3 students and students with social sciences background. Also, correlation test revealed that increases in Level of contact with MD correlates with decrease of negative stereotypes towards persons with MD.

Keywords: Student Nurse, mental disorder, stigmatizing attitude, familiarity