Influential Factors (Comfortable)

Theme 3: Influential factors (Comfortable and Uncomfortable)
The third theme related to the factors which believed had influenced participants perceptions and attitudes. The factors were more comfortable and leading to more positive perceptions, and less comfortable. The factors are sub cluster: influential others (specific people or groups of people that left an impression related to mental illness) and exposure and familiarity (the degree of contact with mental illness).
Influential others contributed almost equally to comfortable and uncomfortable reactions in the faculty. Those influential others who left comfortable or positive impressions varied somewhat. Three cited their psychiatric nursing faculty colleagues (three sources/seven

Two credited their mothers for their comfort level with and respect for people with mental illness. One mother was a psychiatric nurse practitioner, the other a special education teacher.
I was steeped in it, yes. And, we would talk about reasons behind behavior, even my own. So not just...so I think that that in itself is a psychiatric health mentality. There's always a reason behind a people's actions. There's thoughts behind those... that leads to that. So I guess that's the sort of thing, looking deeper at a human being as opposed to they’re here for kidney stones.
Finally, one interviewee described a nursing home administrator she had worked with and another described a public health nurse colleague who worked with infants and young children at risk. Both were positive influences that the interviewees believed impacted their perceptions of mental illness and vulnerable populations at both ends of the generational

She’s old.”), family members who were unwilling to face mental illness within the family itself, or societal beliefs and biases that stigmatize people with mental illness.
Exposure or familiarity
The delineation between this category and the categories in the first theme related to the images associated with mental illness was in some ways an artificial one. Many of the comments fit into both categories. Answers included in this section represent those faculty members who specifically identified more experience that is extensive with mentally ill individuals as more positively influential than short-term contact. Eight sources with twelve references reported that experience and familiarity with mental illness tended to increase comfort and decrease fear.
I think if you never have worked with a certain kind of population or situation I think a lot of times, adults or people or kids, whatever, we’re just afraid of the unknown. So I think the more that you work with the clients you’re afraid of or the situations, I think the better off you are and the more you learn. And the more you learn the more you know and the less afraid you