Effectiveness of Psycho-Education on Care Givers Burden among Caregivers of Patients with Schizophrenia

Abstract

Background: The adverse consequences of psychiatric disorders for relatives have been studied since the early 1950 s, when psychiatric institutions began discharging patients into the community. Despite the increased demands on family members to provide care for psychiatry patients. Psychological distress or burden of care givers often results in poor care provided to their relatives. Most studies showed high burden and lack of knowledge, negative attitude in caregiver's leads to high relapse rate of schizophrenia. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the psycho-education on caregivers' burden among caregivers' of patients with schizophrenia. Method: Caregivers' of patients with schizophrenia were assessed their burden by administering the Burden Assessment Schedule (BAS) (H.Sell, R.Thara, R.Padmavati, and S. Kumar 1998) and structured socio demographic data as a pre-test to both the study and control groups. The psycho-education was given to study group separately, the control group was remained only routine care. After one month posttest 1 and after two months posttest 2 were conducted for both the groups. Results: 40 caregivers' of patients with schizophrenia were divided in to two groups, n= 20 for study group and n=20 for control group, were participated in the study. The results reveals that the mean scores of burden in both groups at pretest before the psycho-education were (83.42, SD=8.47, 82.83, SD=7.32). After the psycho-education to study group the mean scores of both groups were at post test- 1 (48.50 SD=6.86, 79.92 SD=6.96) respectively. At posttest-2 mean scores of both the groups were (34.67 SD=1.68, 80.00 SD= 7.39) respectively. The scores of burden of caregivers' before and after psychoeducation in study group were statistically different and comparisons with study and control group with respective burden scores of t-test in posttest-1 ( t=-14.3825 at p<0.01), posttest-2 ( t=-26.7371 at p<0.01), the paired t-test values in posttest-1 ( paired t-test=25.7816 at p<0.01) posttest-2 ( paired ttest= 26.4821 at p<0.01) and chi-square values pretest ( 0.1732) posttest-1 (26.2857 at p<0.01) posttest-2 (40.0000, at p<0.01) were showed statistically significant relationship in psycho-education and burden level. The study group participants were found psycho-education as an interesting and very useful. Conclusion: Psycho-education on schizophrenia reduces the burden level among care givers' of patients with schizophrenia. Therefore the psycho-education was targeting the caregivers of patients with schizophrenia should results in successful treatment, regular follow-ups and rehabilitation of their patients and also helps them to control and manages their stress and burnout.