M225. EXPRESSED EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS AMONG CAREGIVERS OF PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC MENTAL ILLNESS ATTENDING PSYCHIATRIC DEPARTMENT OF BPKIHS

BACKGROUND: Family expressed emotions had been shown to be predictive of outcome in mental illnesses in variety of cultural settings. Distressed caregivers who provide care to mentally ill relatives are at risk for developing mental health disorders. METHODS: A hospital based cross sectional study was conducted among 85 caregivers of chronic mental illness using purposive sampling technique. Caregivers were interviewed using Family Questionnaire (FQ) and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) to assess expressed emotions and psychological distress of caregivers respectively. RESULTS: More than half (55.3%) of the caregivers had low expressed emotions while 44.7% had high expressed emotions. More than half (55.3%) of the caregivers had low psychological distress, followed by medium risk (31.8%) and high risk (12.9%). Study revealed significant association between caregiver’s expressed emotion with caregiver’s relationship to patient, area of residence, socioeconomic status, age and gender of patients. Caregiver’s psychological distress had a significant association with their relationships with patient and educational qualification of patient. There was positive correlation between caregiver’s expressed emotions and psychological distress. DISCUSSION: This study illustrated that more than half (55.3%) of the caregivers had low expressed emotions and 44.7% had high expressed emotions while caring their patients with chronic mental illness. This finding is contradictory to the findings of a study conducted in India which depicts that most of the caregivers were designated as high EE (56%) as compared to low EE (44%). Another study conducted in Thailand indicated that large number of caregivers have high expressed emotion (87.5%).Another descriptive quantitative exploratory study done in Saudi Arabia had shown that majority of caregivers had low EE (85%). This differences in the results related to expressed emotions could be possibly due to variations in the sample size and tools used for data collection among these studies.