Nursing as a profession has to meet the needs and/or the problems of the society. Mental health problems are on the increase and it is imperative that all nurses be prepared to deal with people who are having mental health problems. Hence mental health nursing was incorporated into the undergraduate nursing programme with the purpose or objective of creating awareness, among nursing graduates, regarding mental disorder, and thereby developing a positive attitude towards mental illness. The present examination system emphasizes on the evaluation of change in knowledge and skill rather than attitudinal change after a prescribed course. Attitudinal change being an important objective of the mental health nursing course, the investigator had undertaken a study to compare the attitude towards mental illness, of a group of B.Sc. Nursing students who have not undergone mental health nursing course with that of another group of B.Sc. Nursing students who have completed the said course. This study reveals the effectiveness of variables like a Mental Health Nursing course, in terms of bringing out an attitudinal change in students towards mental illness.

Method: A descriptive survey approach was used for the study. The setting was under taken in Bldeas Shri B M Patil Institute of Nursing sciences Vijayapur Karnataka. Multi staged Proportionate Random Sampling was used to select the colleges and simple random sampling by lottery method was used to select the subjects. Opinion about Mental Illness (OMI) scale by Cohen and Strueing was used to collect the data. The domains covered are namely Authoritarianism, Benevolence, Mental Health Ideology, Social Restrictiveness, and Interpersonal Etiology which measures the attitude towards mental illness. On the OMI scale, the subjects respond to each item by checking one of the six alternatives: Strongly agree, Agree, Not sure but probably agree, Not sure but probably disagree, Disagree, Strongly disagree. The tool was administered to 100 second year B.Sc. Nursing students and 100 fourth year nursing students.

Results: The collected data was analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics. Majority 99% of the second-year students and 96% of the fourth year students belonged to the completed age group of sixteen to twenty one years at the time of admission. Most of the subjects (78%; 89% respectively) belonged to Christian religion. Less than half (39%) of the both groups had previous exposure with mental illness.

Majority of the students of the second year and fourth year nursing students possessed a moderate attitude towards the five factors on the OMI scale. Majority (93%) of the fourth year students felt that mentally ill people need some amount of restriction, even after the completion of mental health nursing course.

All the hypotheses were accepted. There was a significant difference between the second year and fourth year B.Sc. Nursing students with regard to the mean scores obtained on factors like authoritarianism (t=0.024, p<0.05 ), mental health ideology (t=0.036, p<0.05), social restrictiveness(t=0.001, p<0.05 ) and interpersonal etiology (t=0.011, p<0.05 ). No significant difference was found between the second and fourth year nursing students in benevolence (t=0.697, P>0.05).

Interpretation: Findings of the study indicate that most of the students of second- and fourth-year B.Sc. Nursing students held a moderate or neutral attitude towards the five factors on the OMI scale. Also it was revealed that the group who have undergone the mental health nursing course differ significantly from the other group, who have not undergone the said course in the matter of their attitude towards mental illness on the five domains of attitude as given in the OMI scale.

Conclusion: Nurses are expected to provide holistic care to the mentally ill patients and their relatives for that they should have sound theoretical and practical backing provided through specialized training in the respective field.