International Journal of Nursing Care

In our world one in four people will be affected by mental or neurological disorder at some point in their lives. Around 440 million people currently suffered from such conditions, placing mental disorders among the leading cause of ill health and disability world wide.4 Hence it is essential to improve the knowledge and attitude of public towards mental illness. Considering this fact a descriptive study was conducted to assess the knowledge and attitude towards mental illness among middle adults in selected rural area, at Thrissur. The objective of the study were to assess the knowledge and attitude towards mental illness among middle adults, to correlate knowledge with attitude, to associate knowledge and attitude with selected demographic variables of middle adults. 60 samples were collected by the purposive sampling method. Data collection was done through structured knowledge questionnaire to assess knowledge towards mental illness and attitude was assessed using five point likert scale. Following the collection of data, an information booklet was provided regarding mental health and mental illness. Regarding the results, majority of the samples have poor (45%) and very poor knowledge (10%) regarding mental illness. Considering the attitude most of them have poor attitude (28.3%)journal towards mental illness. From the findings it is clear that majority of the middle adults in rural area have very poor knowledge (10%) and attitude (15%) towards mental illness. A positive correlation was found between the knowledge and attitude with‘r’ value is + (0.268). Hence it was interrupted as person who had poor knowledge towards mental illness have poor attitude. There is significant association between knowledge and demographic variables such as age, gender, religion, education, occupation, and source of information. There is a significant association between attitude and demographic variable such as age gender, religion, education, occupation and source of information.