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Assessment of the burden on caregivers of patients with mental disorders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

BACKGROUND: Mental disorders are considered important public health problems not only to people with mental illness but also their caregivers. As is the case in many countries, the deinstitutionalization of mental health services in Saudi Arabia, has meant that informal caregivers are shouldering re...

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Autores principales: Alzahrani, Sami H., Fallata, Ebtihaj O., Alabdulwahab, Marwa A., Alsafi, Wesam A., Bashawri, Jamil
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5450140/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28558771
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-017-1368-1
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author Alzahrani, Sami H.
Fallata, Ebtihaj O.
Alabdulwahab, Marwa A.
Alsafi, Wesam A.
Bashawri, Jamil
author_facet Alzahrani, Sami H.
Fallata, Ebtihaj O.
Alabdulwahab, Marwa A.
Alsafi, Wesam A.
Bashawri, Jamil
author_sort Alzahrani, Sami H.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Mental disorders are considered important public health problems not only to people with mental illness but also their caregivers. As is the case in many countries, the deinstitutionalization of mental health services in Saudi Arabia, has meant that informal caregivers are shouldering responsibilities for which they are not usually prepared; therefore, the current study was aimed at assessment of the burden on caregivers of people with mental illness. METHODS: Through a cross-sectional design, a sample of the caregivers of people with mental illness (n = 377) was selected randomly from a psychiatric hospital in Jeddah. An Arabic version of the Involvement Evaluation Questionnaire (IEQ) was used for collection of data. The data were analyzed on the subscale scores and the 27 items in two ways. First, we used the summed scores for the subscales based on the Likert scale (0–4) for univariate and multivariate statistical analyses, as recommended. We also used parametric statistics (t-tests, one-way ANOVA) because the IEQ subscale scores were fairly normally distributed. RESULTS: Males constituted more than one-half of the participating caregivers (55%), with a mean age of 36.6, SD = 11.4 years. As reported by the caregivers, most of the patients were males (62.7%) with a mean age of 33.8, SD = 13.7 years and a range of 17–90 years old. The total mean IEQ burden score of the caregivers was 38.4, SD = 17.5. “Tension” was significantly prominent among younger caregivers aged ≤30 years. “Worrying” was significantly higher among caregivers living with their spouse and children and those living in families with relatively fewer members (<6 members). “Urging” was significantly higher among caregivers who are living with the patient in the same household and those who had been in close contact with the patient for 28 days in the four weeks prior to the study (13.4, SD = 6.8) p < 0.05. Meanwhile, “Urging” was also significantly higher among caregivers caring for mentally ill females (13.5, SD = 6.6) and those not receiving any kind of professional support (12.8, SD = 6.7). The overall burden and the subscale scores were highest among caregivers caring for a close relative such as a parent (44.1, SD = 17.6), son/daughter (39.1, SD = 12.9), sibling (37.1, SD = 18.6), or spouse (37.1, SD = 18.6) p < 0.05. CONCLUSION: Care for people with mental illness is burdensome for their caregivers, the magnitude of burden is potentially augmented by factors related to the patients and households. These factors should be considered when planning for preparing caregivers to cope with people with mental illness in Saudi Arabia.
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spelling pubmed-54501402017-06-01 Assessment of the burden on caregivers of patients with mental disorders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Alzahrani, Sami H. Fallata, Ebtihaj O. Alabdulwahab, Marwa A. Alsafi, Wesam A. Bashawri, Jamil BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: Mental disorders are considered important public health problems not only to people with mental illness but also their caregivers. As is the case in many countries, the deinstitutionalization of mental health services in Saudi Arabia, has meant that informal caregivers are shouldering responsibilities for which they are not usually prepared; therefore, the current study was aimed at assessment of the burden on caregivers of people with mental illness. METHODS: Through a cross-sectional design, a sample of the caregivers of people with mental illness (n = 377) was selected randomly from a psychiatric hospital in Jeddah. An Arabic version of the Involvement Evaluation Questionnaire (IEQ) was used for collection of data. The data were analyzed on the subscale scores and the 27 items in two ways. First, we used the summed scores for the subscales based on the Likert scale (0–4) for univariate and multivariate statistical analyses, as recommended. We also used parametric statistics (t-tests, one-way ANOVA) because the IEQ subscale scores were fairly normally distributed. RESULTS: Males constituted more than one-half of the participating caregivers (55%), with a mean age of 36.6, SD = 11.4 years. As reported by the caregivers, most of the patients were males (62.7%) with a mean age of 33.8, SD = 13.7 years and a range of 17–90 years old. The total mean IEQ burden score of the caregivers was 38.4, SD = 17.5. “Tension” was significantly prominent among younger caregivers aged ≤30 years. “Worrying” was significantly higher among caregivers living with their spouse and children and those living in families with relatively fewer members (<6 members). “Urging” was significantly higher among caregivers who are living with the patient in the same household and those who had been in close contact with the patient for 28 days in the four weeks prior to the study (13.4, SD = 6.8) p < 0.05. Meanwhile, “Urging” was also significantly higher among caregivers caring for mentally ill females (13.5, SD = 6.6) and those not receiving any kind of professional support (12.8, SD = 6.7). The overall burden and the subscale scores were highest among caregivers caring for a close relative such as a parent (44.1, SD = 17.6), son/daughter (39.1, SD = 12.9), sibling (37.1, SD = 18.6), or spouse (37.1, SD = 18.6) p < 0.05. CONCLUSION: Care for people with mental illness is burdensome for their caregivers, the magnitude of burden is potentially augmented by factors related to the patients and households. These factors should be considered when planning for preparing caregivers to cope with people with mental illness in Saudi Arabia. BioMed Central 2017-05-30 /pmc/articles/PMC5450140/ /pubmed/28558771 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-017-1368-1 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Alzahrani, Sami H.
Fallata, Ebtihaj O.
Alabdulwahab, Marwa A.
Alsafi, Wesam A.
Bashawri, Jamil
Assessment of the burden on caregivers of patients with mental disorders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
title Assessment of the burden on caregivers of patients with mental disorders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
title_full Assessment of the burden on caregivers of patients with mental disorders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
title_fullStr Assessment of the burden on caregivers of patients with mental disorders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
title_full_unstemmed Assessment of the burden on caregivers of patients with mental disorders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
title_short Assessment of the burden on caregivers of patients with mental disorders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
title_sort assessment of the burden on caregivers of patients with mental disorders in jeddah, saudi arabia
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5450140/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28558771
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-017-1368-1
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