Swedish State Politics Meets Experiences Among Relatives of Persons with Mental Disability

Abstract

Mental disability is one of the most serious health problems facing Europe today. The reform of psychiatric care in Sweden ha s passed much of the rehabilitation and daily care of these people on to their families/relatives. The aim of this article is to analyze how the psychiatric reform in Sweden affects everyday life experiences among close relatives of persons with mental disabilities. It is an explorative, descriptive study using inductive qualitative content analysis of 18 individual interviews with close relatives. In order to deepen the understanding of the relatives’ situation and the consequences of the psychiatry reform, the relatives’ statements are put in a dialogue with how problems are represented in documents that form the basis of the psychiatry reform. The result indicates that the reform of psychiatric care in Sweden has put the solution of problems on the relatives, but for the relatives there is still no consensus among the different care providers, county council, municipal and national social servi ces that are involved in treatment. The results further indicate that the relatives feel guilty about not providing enough support for the persons with mental disabilities, and they expressed a need for personal support; a need for better information, consistency throughout the caring process and professional therapy for themselves as well. Children of parents with mental disabilities express a need for assistance, opportunities for participation in care, and information about their parents’ illness. Even th ough there are a lot of bad experiences, all relatives could also relate to positive experiences, i.e. open dialogues, relevant information and timely care and support given by some hospital staff. We recommend that relatives’ experiences are taken seriously in further reforms of the psychiatric care and that relatives meet in different kinds of supportive networks.