Context:Majority of health professionals have unfavorable attitudes towards patients presenting with self-harm, which further compromises their willingness and outcome of care.Aims:To assess the nursing students’ attitudes toward suicide attempters.Settings and Design:Cross-sectional study was conducted in two nursing colleges of north India.Material and Methods:Three hundred and eight nursing students were recruited through total enumeration method from May to June 2012. ‘Suicide opinion questionnaire’ was administered to assess their attitudes towards suicide attempters.Statistical Analysis Used:Descriptive statistics was employed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 14.0 for Windows.Results:Majority were single females, from urban locality, with the mean age of 20 years. Only minority had previous exposure to suicide prevention programs and management of such cases. Majority of students agreed for mental illness, disturbed family life, and depression as major push to attempt suicide. They held favorable attitude for half of the attitudinal statement, but they were uncertain for rest half of the statements.Conclusions:They generally had favorable attitude towards suicide attempters. Their uncertain response highlights the need for enhancing educational exposure of nursing students and new staff at the earliest opportunity, to carve their favorable attitude towards patients presenting with self-harm.

Background:Preventing suicide depends upon different health professionals’ knowledge regarding suicide, attitude toward suicide attempters, skills to assess and manage suicidal risk.Objectives:This study was aimed to assess the attitude of nursing students toward suicide prevention.Materials and Methods:308 nursing students were recruited from the two institutions through total enumeration method. Attitude toward suicide prevention scale was administered. Study design was cross-sectional.Results:Majority were single females, from urban locality, who were pursuing BSc Nursing with the mean age of 20 years. Only minority had previous exposure to suicide prevention programs or workshops. Nearly half of the subjects had positive attitude toward working with suicidal patients. Again half of the subjects considered unemployment and poverty as main causes of suicide and were quite hopeless about it and they also perceived that most of the suicidal people would not reveal their suicidal plans to others.Conclusions:Merely half of the students had positive attitude toward working with suicidal patients. Hence, there is strong need to organize more educational and training programs on suicide prevention so that these budding health professionals could be more equipped and trained to manage these suicidal patients.

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