Attitude to treatment and direction of interest of forensic mental health nurses: a comparison with nurses working in other specialties.

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The attitudes of nurses working within forensic psychiatry are often perceived as being custodially oriented. Working on this commonly held assumption the authors hypothesized that nurses working within a physically controlled environment such as a Regional Secure Unit would hold more conservative/biological attitudes toward treatment, and would be more 'object'-oriented (as opposed to 'psychologically' oriented) than those working in less physically controlled clinical areas. [For the purpose of this paper the term 'Regional Secure Unit' is used to describe the medium secure facilities that were included in this study, although one of the units did not serve a wholly regional function.] This paper outlines a study that attempted to examine this hypothesis. A total of 84 nurses from three clinical specialties (Regional Secure Units, Acute Admission Wards and Drug Dependence Units) completed the Attitude to Treatment Questionnaire (ATQ) and the Direction of Interest Questionnaire (DIQ) (Caine et al. 1981). Each nurse also completed a demographic information questionnaire, supplying details of age, professional experience and educational attainment. The results indicate no significant differences on measures used between specialty groups. Significant positive correlations were found between age and conservatism on the ATQ, and between ATQ conservatism and DIQ object centredness. Implications of these results are discussed and suggestions for future research are made.