Abstract
Context:: Majority of health professionals have unfavorable attitudes towards patients presenting with self-harm, which further compromises their willingness and outcome of care. Aims:: To assess the nursing students attitudes toward suicide attempters. Settings and Design:: Cross-sectional study was conducted in two nursing colleges of north India. Material and Methods:: Three hundred and eight nursing students were recruited through total enumeration method from May to June 2012. Suicide opinion questionnaire was administered to assess their attitudes towards suicide attempters. Statistical Analysis Used:: Descriptive statistics was employed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 14.0 for Windows. Results:: Majority were single females, from urban locality, with the mean age of 20 years. Only minority had previous exposure to suicide prevention programs and management of such cases. Majority of students agreed for mental illness, disturbed family life, and depression as major push to attempt suicide. They held favorable attitude for half of the attitudinal statement, but they were uncertain for rest half of the statements. Conclusions:: They generally had favorable attitude towards suicide attempters. Their uncertain response highlights the need for enhancing educational exposure of nursing students and new staff at the earliest opportunity, to carve their favorable attitude towards patients presenting with self-harm.
Copyright
Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Derivative-Non Commercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit.
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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License, which permits unrestricted reproduction and distribution, for non-commercial purposes only; and use and reproduction, but not distribution, of adapted material for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original work is properly cited.
