Burden of Caregivers in Severe Mental Illness: A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

Long-term mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and substance use disorder often impose a burden on the patient as well as on the primary caregivers to the patient. There are several instruments constructed to measure the burden inflicted on the patient’s family or caregiver. One of these instruments used to measure caregiver’s burden is Involvement Evaluation Questionnaire (IEQ). The IEQ is a 31-item questionnaire which is completed by the caregiver. [6] It contains 27 questions which are divided into 4 subscales: tension (nine items), supervision (six items), worrying (six items) and urging (eight items). Two items appear in more than one domain. The items are scored on a 5-point Likert scale (never, sometimes, regularly, often and [almost] always). The questionnaire was administered to forty-five primary caregivers of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or substance use disorder. The caregivers were aged between 18-70 years and the duration of the illness was more than 3 months. The patients and caregivers were both predominantly male. When the IEQ was analyzed, the mean score was 52.5 (17.6). The mean of the GHQ was 5.19 (2.83). The majority of caregivers surveyed were male and family members. 33.3% of the caregivers were parents of the patient. More than 86% of the caregivers provided help for more than 32h with the patient.