Social attitudes of baccalaureate students in nursing regarding the problem of mental illness

Two hundred and ten students in nursing at Ball State University, approximately 50 from each of the Freshmen, Sophomore, Junior and Senior classes, were surveyed as to their attitudes toward Mental Illness. The Custodial Mental Illness Ideology Scale developed by Doris C. Gilbert and Daniel J. Levinson of Boston was the instrument used. This scale consisted of 20 statements about mental illness and the student responded on a seven point Likert-type scale with responses for each item ranging from strongly agree (+3) to strongly disagree (-3).The hypotheses tested were:1. A student entering the baccalaureate program has a set of social attitudes toward mental illness.2. During the four year college enrollment in a baccalaureate nursing curriculum, there is a change in the student's set of social attitudes.3. If a change occurs in the student during the collegiate educational process, it is oriented to humanism rather than custodialism.The responses for each of the 20 items were totaled for each respondent and the mean and standard of deviation of these total scores were computed by classes. The mean of the classes were compared with each other using the critical ratio formula to determine statistical significance between the groups.In addition the mean and standard deviation of each item of the scale were computed for the total sample. The four most custodial items and the four least custodial items were discussed.Thesis (M.A.