Jothimani G et al.| Attitude of Nursing Professionals and caregivers towards the Rights of the Mentally Ill person: Comparative study International Journal of Nursing 1(2), 2012 33 Attitude of Nursing Professionals and caregivers towards the Rights of the Mentally Ill person: Comparative study Jothimani G *a , Nagarajaiah b , Joseph J c , Ramachandra d Keywords: Attitude; care givers; Nursing professionals ORIGINAL ARTICLE Background: The Attitude of Nursing Professionals and caregivers towards the Rights the of Mentally Ill is very important issue in mental health nursing. The objectives were to study the socio demographic characteristics and compare the Nursing Professionals and care givers attitude towards the rights of mentally ill. Methods: A descriptive study design was carried out among 50 nursing professionals and 50 caregivers were randomly selected from the study population. The socio demographic schedule and the Professional attitude scale (David et al 2002) were used to collect the data. The data was collected through face to face interviews using structured questionnaire. Data was analysed and interpreted using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The mean age of the study group was 38.33 years and the range is 23 to 60 years. Among care givers majority of them belongs to Hindu religion, studied up to higher secondary, and from rural background. About the nursing professionals majority of them belongs to Hindu religion studied up to diploma in General nursing and midwifery, and working as staff nurses with less than 10 yrs of experience. Professional attitude found that the subjects are having positive attitude towards the rights of mentally ill and there were significant differences between Nursing professionals and Caregivers in four of the six domains of patients’ perceived rights. Specifically, there were differences between groups in terms of situations that justify non treatments and forced hospitalization. Overall attitude scores obtained by both the group were found to be significant. Conclusion: Due to the chronic nature and significant impairment in decision making capacity among mentally ill patients makes both the nursing professionals and caregivers to act in accordance to the patient’s ne eds rather than considering the patients’ rights. *Corresponding Author Clinical Instructor, College of Nursing, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore-560029, India. E-mail: jothisrinivas.jothi@gmail.com Article Info: Submitted: Dec 21, 2012; Accepted: May 16, 2013; Published: Jun 15, 2013 a. Clinical Instructor, College of Nursing, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India b. Additional Professor, Department of Nursing, NIMHANS, Bangalore, India. c. Lecturer, College of Nursing, Thidal, Kanyakumari DT, Tamilnadu. India d. Associate Professor, Department of Nursing, NIMHANS, Bangalore, India. ABSTRACT Jothimani G © 2012 International Journal of Nursing This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited