A study to assess the knowledge and attitude regarding mental illness among professional students in selected colleges of Pune city

In ancient day’s people are of a believe that mental illness is caused, when a spirits get into the body of a person, day-by-day stigma related to the mental illness is being arising vastly. One of the rudest behaviour of people is used to neglect that mentally ill person from the family & society. People are of a view that the faith healers would treat bitterly the mental illness than the psychiatrist. Health is that which includes both mental and physical parts of a person. Mental wellness plays a major role for a healthy life. Now a day’s people were more prone to mental illness. Mental illness is impairment of personal functioning like behaviour changes, thinking etc. According to WHO report in 2017, 970 million number of people were prone to have mental illness in all over the world (Roser H. R., 2018). In that more percentage were affected by females i.e., 13.3%. In high income countries as compared middle or low income countries 90% of suicidal death were because of mental illness. Due to stigma associated with mental illness, a lack of awareness and limited access to professional help (30 Apr.2018) conducted by Ms. Deepika. People’s understanding of mental health in this statistical study it showed that 71% of the respondents have used the terms associated with stigma. (30-Apr-2017) by Mr. Murali. (Deepika Padukone, 2018) A non-experimental research design was adopted to conduct the study. A total of 200 samples, age between 18 to 21 years was selected by using purposive sampling technique. Study instruments was self-structured tool used by the researcher, consist of three parts: Part 1: Demographic data Part 2: Mental illness knowledge assessment tool. Part 3: Mental illness attitude assessment tool. The findings of the study revealed that 10% of the professional student have poor knowledge regarding mental illness 37% of the professional students have good knowledge and 53% of the professional students have average knowledge regarding mental illness. The findings of the study revealed that 95% of the professional students having positive attitude towards mental illness and 5% of professional students having neutral and negative attitude towards mental illness. The findings suggest that there is significant difference in age, marital status, and education level. The studies concluded that professional students having average knowledge and positive attitude towards mental illness.