During their practice in psychiatric nursing, the bachelor students at the Bodø University College hand in a written reflection memorandum. The student is required to describe a self-experienced practical situation. We have utilised 56 anonymised reports from this practice. The students have analysed the reports themselves. The task was to search for central themes in the reflection memorandums that they believed to have personal relevance for them. In this way, they have developed an external perspective on their own activity.

The first part of practice is marked by a fear of not mastering the demands of the student role. This fear is first and foremost rooted in prejudices. Stereotypes are common and this leads to some of the students being afraid, and they worry about entering practice. Many of the students describe an attitudinal change during their practice period. They can see that they were controlled by their prejudices, and these prejudices prevented them from communicating effectively with the psychiatric patients. Being together with the patients caused the students to change their attitudes because the students were able to look beyond their prejudices and see real people instead.

The emotional component in the students' attitudes, that is, the fear of the unknown and uncontrollable, is most important. We choose to view the students’ fear as a form of phobic anxiety, an irrational fear. Such a fear can hardly be changed by means of rational arguments. The feared situation has to prove itself safe.