Background:

the attitudes of nursing students towards people with mental illness can influence their learning and the development of skills, compromising the provision of care as future nurses.

Objectives:

to know the attitudes of nursing students towards the person with mental illness and to verify the existing correlation between the attendance to the curricular units of Mental Health and Psychiatry and their attitudes towards the person with mental illness.

Methodology:

quantitative, descriptive-correlational study. Convenience sample with 47 undergraduate nursing students, from a Higher Education Institution in the northern region of Portugal. Data collected through an online questionnaire, consisting of the Attribution Questionaire (AQ-27) (Sousa et al., 2008). Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was used, using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (version 26).

Results:

the presence of moderate stigma was verified in the attitudes of nursing students. There were statistically significant differences between the semester of the course on the categories Irritation [X2 (3) =14,416; P=0,002], Hazard [X2 (3) =11,650; P=0,009] and Fear [X2 (3) =12,523; P=0,006] and Pena [F (3,43) = 5,471; P=0,003].

Conclusion:

theoretical and practical teaching revealed a decrease in stigmatizing attitudes, as well as previous experience in Mental Health.