Comparison of high school future nurse club members with nonmembers on opinions about mental illness

The purpose of this study was to determine if there were any significant differences in the opinions towards mental illness between high school Future Nurse Club members and high school non-future Nurse Club members. Cohen and Struening's (1960) Opinions About Mental Illness Scale which measures five opinion factors was given to 52 high school members of the Future Nurse Clubs and to 48 nonmembers who were from the same high schools and grade levels. T tests were computed to determine any significant differences between the FN and NN groups on the five opinion factors. The FN and NN groups were also compared on the variables of high school, grade level, and social class according to the parents' occupations. There were not significant differences between the FN and NN groups on the five areas of opinions towards mental illness. Differences which occurred in the comparison of FN and NN opinions with high school taken into account, indicated that in on high school the NN group and a more favorable score on Unsophisticated Benevolence, and in a second high school the NN group scored more favorably on Interpersonal Etiology. In the lower class category, the FN group was more favorable on Social Restrictiveness than in the NN group. When students from the FN and NN groups were combined according to grade level, the results indicated that the twelfth grade group rated more favorable on Mental Hygiene Ideology than did either the tenth grade or eleventh grade groups. Separate chi-squares were computed to determine if FN members had more acquaintance with a professional person who works with people having emotional problems than nonmembers and if FN members had more friends or family members who had been mentally ill and did NN members. The results indicated that FN members were acquainted with more professional people who worked with the mentally ill. There was no significant difference between the FN and NN group on having a friend or family member who has been mentally ill. A greater percentage of students appeared to have more interest in areas of nursing that had to do with working with people than in the technical aspect, such as assisting in the operating room. Since being a member of the Future Nurse Club did not appear to influence opinions significantly, one implication might be that experiences need to be planned in the programs of the Future Nurse Clubs so that members do learn more favorable attitudes toward people who are mentally ill. This could aid recruitment into psychiatric nursing, as it is assumed that nurses with more favorable attitudes toward the mentally would be more likely to select psychiatric nursing as a field of practice