A study to assess the knowledge regarding mental health act among staff nurses at selected psychiatric hospitals in bangalore with a view to develop an information guide sheet

Background: Mental health legislation is essential for complementing and reinforcing mental health policy and providing a legal framework for meeting its goals. Such legislation can protect human rights, enhance the quality of mental health services and promote the integration of persons with mental disorders into communities. Nurses play an important role in caring the mentally ill clients and thus study of the knowledge of staff nurses regarding the mental health act may provide some insight into the present day situation prevailing in our community and thus required interventions can be planned. Objectives of the study were • To assess the knowledge regarding Mental Health Act among Staff Nurses at selected psychiatric hospitals. • To find out an association between the levels of knowledge on mental health act among Staff Nurses at selected psychiatric hospitals with selected demographic variables. • To develop and provide information guide sheet regarding mental health act. Methods Descriptive exploratory survey design was used for the study. The study was conducted at Spandana hospital private limited, Bangalore. Fifty staff nurses through purposive sampling technique who met the inclusion criteria were included in the study. The tool used was a knowledge questionnaire. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Results Ninety two percent of the staff nurses were in the age group of 20-30 years whereas 8% of the staff nurses were in the age group of 31-40 years. Sixty four percent of the staff nurses had done their training in general nursing whereas 36% of the staff nurses had done B.Sc nursing. Knowledge scores of respondents range between 9 and 32; mean is 21.06; standard deviation is 4.49; median is 21 and mean percentage is 52.65. Majority of the samples (52%) have good knowledge and 42% of the samples have satisfactory knowledge on mental health act. 2% and 4% of the samples have excellent and poor knowledge on mental health act respectively. There was no association between the knowledge score and selected demographic variables such as Age, Professional qualification, Years of experience, Income, Marital status, Gender, Source of information at 0.05 level. Interpretation The result shows that majority of the samples had good knowledge and very few of the samples had excellent knowledge on mental health act. Conclusion The study showed that very few samples have excellent knowledge on mental health act and hence enhancement of knowledge in the area of mental health legislation can have a positive impact on the care rendered by the nurses.