Determining the caregivers’ burden in caregivers of patients with mental illness

Abstract

Objective: To examine the factors associated with caregivers’ burden in individuals providing care to family members suffering from serious mental illness.
 Methods: This Cross Sectional Study was carried out at Armed Forces Institute of Mental Health, Rawalpindi, from May 2015 to December 2015. A purposive sample of 120 family caregivers (60 males and 60 females, age range= 18-65) who were taking care of patients with serious mental illness (i.e. Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar Disorder & Schizophrenia) for at least one year were recruited from the hospital and assessed through Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI) and Brief COPE inventory. The decline in functional status, and diminished physical capacity compromising the independent living of the care recipient was assessed through Katz Index of Independence in Activities of daily living (ADL) and Lawton Instrumental activities of daily living (IADL).
 Results: The results suggest that the longer the duration of illness (F=25.71, p < 0.01), with increased impairments of care-recipients, (decline in functional status, F=21.33, p < 0.001; diminished physical capacity F =32.41, p < 0.001) the more the burden experienced by the caregivers. Moreover, caregivers who were married (t=-2.98, p < 0.01), less educated (t =5.48, p < 0.01), lived in rural area (t = -7.99, p < 0.01), had lower monthly income (t = -4.95, p < 0.01) provide longer hours of caregiving (F=19.12, p < 0.001) and used avoidant coping behavior (F= 56.37, p < 0.001) reported significantly higher caregiver burden than caregivers who were unmarried, more educated, lived in urban area and had better income.
 Conclusion: The results of study demonstrate that caring for family members with serious mental illness impacts the caregivers’ wellbeing. It, therefore, highlights the need for support and counseling services for the caregivers to reduce the burden of caring.
 doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.5.720
 How to cite this:Siddiqui S, Khalid J. Determining the caregivers’ burden in caregivers of patients with mental illness. Pak J Med Sci. 2019;35(5):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.5.720
 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Empathy and burden in caregivers of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders

“…The ZBI was validated in many countries across the world [54] and has recently been used in psychiatric clinical practice to assess the emotional burden in caregivers of patients affected by schizophrenia spectrum disorders [30,55]. A study, using ZBI, reported high level of burden associated with some caregiver variables (age, gender, educational level) and, at the same time, with the duration of both caregiving and schizophrenia [54].…”

“…A study, using ZBI, reported high level of burden associated with some caregiver variables (age, gender, educational level) and, at the same time, with the duration of both caregiving and schizophrenia [54]. In particular, it was reported that caregivers who were married, less educated, living in rural areas and with low economic income normally provided longer period of support to their assisted individuals than others, often assuming an avoidant coping behaviour towards their assisted patients, which resulted in higher caregiver burden [30,55,56].…”

“…In the last few years, an increasing number of studies have analysed the characteristics of caregivers, assisted patients in order to discover the cause of the perceived "caregiver burden", with mixed results. Although some studies are not able to highlight any correlation between caregiver burden and patient characteristics [25,26,27], some research shows that some variables of patients affected by schizophrenia could worsen caregiver burden: male gender, young age, impaired functional skills, severe mental illness for a long time, multiple psychiatric hospitalizations [28,29,30]. Regarding disorder characteristics, suicidal ideation, behavioural disorders and/or negative symptoms have the highest impact on the increase of perceived burden [31].…”

“…Regarding disorder characteristics, suicidal ideation, behavioural disorders and/or negative symptoms have the highest impact on the increase of perceived burden [31]. Regarding caregiver characteristics, some studies point out that being female, being old, having a low socio-economic status and assisting more than one patient could increase caregiver burden [29,30,32]. The level of caregiver empathy could affect the perceived burden.…”

Determinants of Family Independence in Caring for Hebephrenic Schizophrenia Patients

“… 5 Furthermore, an interview with 10 and 6 families indicated a deficiency in the understanding of how to teach independence to patients leading to the poor desire to regularly take medication and subsequent relapse. 6 …”