"A study to assess the knowledge and attitude of nurses regarding management of patient with depression in a selected general hospital at Tumkur, Karnataka"

Depression is one of the common and most affected worldwide public health problems. Depression is an illness that not only involves the mood and thought of a person but also the whole body. Depression is a major cause for premature death and disabilities throughout the world. The high prevalence of suicide is closely associated with depression. Every person usually suffers with depression during their life time. But the degree may be from mild to severe. Method: The research approach used for the study was descriptive survey approach and the research design selected for the study was non experimental descriptive research design. The pilot study was conducted with 10 samples and the reliability of tool was established by rater and inters rater method for the main study 100 samples of nurses were selected by the convenient sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge and attitude of nurses regarding management of patients with depression. The reliability coefficient for knowledge was 0.78 and for attitude was 0.96. The correlation value of knowledge and attitude was found to be 0.86.which is reliable. Results: The data were analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics .the mean score of the knowledge was 14.33 with standard deviation5.61 and the mean score for the attitude was found 15.61 with standard deviation 0f 5.77. The study findings revealed that majority of nurses60% demonstrated inadequate knowledge and majority 56% of nurses exhibited unfavorable attitude towards the management of depressive patients. A significant relationship was found between and attitude as the obtained coefficient of correlation value (r).957 was significant at 0.05 level. This suggests that nurses who had lower score in knowledge questionnaire also had lower score in attitudes questions. Interpretation and conclusion: From the study findings it is clearly depicted that nurses knowledge regarding management of patient was found inadequate and attitude was found unfavorable and also found that selected demographic variables such as sex, general education, work area and position of a nurse in the hospital had no significant relationship, and variable such as experience and in-service education program had shown significant relationship with their knowledge and attitude.