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Challenges of Providing Home Care for a Family Member with Serious Chronic Mental Illness: A Qualitative Enquiry

The South African Mental Health Act of 2002 advocates the de-institutionalization of treatment of patients with mental disorders, so that the mental health care users or patients are treated in their communities. Although this approach is often used to discharge patients from hospital, no feasibilit...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mokwena, Kebogile Elizabeth, Ngoveni, Amukelane
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7696437/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33202649
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17228440
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author Mokwena, Kebogile Elizabeth
Ngoveni, Amukelane
author_facet Mokwena, Kebogile Elizabeth
Ngoveni, Amukelane
author_sort Mokwena, Kebogile Elizabeth
collection PubMed
description The South African Mental Health Act of 2002 advocates the de-institutionalization of treatment of patients with mental disorders, so that the mental health care users or patients are treated in their communities. Although this approach is often used to discharge patients from hospital, no feasibility assessments are conducted to ascertain adequate care for these patients. The objective of the study was to explore the experiences of family members who provide home care for patients with serious mental disorders. A qualitative explorative design was used to interview 20 primary caregivers whose family members were readmitted to a public psychiatric hospital in Pretoria. Data were analysed using NVivo version 11. The findings are that caring for patients with serious mental illness at home is difficult, sometimes unbearable, because the families have to deal with violence perpetrated by the patients, safety concerns, financial difficulties and emotional turmoil, and wish that the patients would be kept in institutions. The absence of required skills and resources to care for the mentally ill at home exposes the patients and their families to emotional, financial and social difficulties, and results in unfavourable outcomes for both the patients and their families.
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spelling pubmed-76964372020-11-29 Challenges of Providing Home Care for a Family Member with Serious Chronic Mental Illness: A Qualitative Enquiry Mokwena, Kebogile Elizabeth Ngoveni, Amukelane Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The South African Mental Health Act of 2002 advocates the de-institutionalization of treatment of patients with mental disorders, so that the mental health care users or patients are treated in their communities. Although this approach is often used to discharge patients from hospital, no feasibility assessments are conducted to ascertain adequate care for these patients. The objective of the study was to explore the experiences of family members who provide home care for patients with serious mental disorders. A qualitative explorative design was used to interview 20 primary caregivers whose family members were readmitted to a public psychiatric hospital in Pretoria. Data were analysed using NVivo version 11. The findings are that caring for patients with serious mental illness at home is difficult, sometimes unbearable, because the families have to deal with violence perpetrated by the patients, safety concerns, financial difficulties and emotional turmoil, and wish that the patients would be kept in institutions. The absence of required skills and resources to care for the mentally ill at home exposes the patients and their families to emotional, financial and social difficulties, and results in unfavourable outcomes for both the patients and their families. MDPI 2020-11-14 2020-11 /pmc/articles/PMC7696437/ /pubmed/33202649 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17228440 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Mokwena, Kebogile Elizabeth
Ngoveni, Amukelane
Challenges of Providing Home Care for a Family Member with Serious Chronic Mental Illness: A Qualitative Enquiry
title Challenges of Providing Home Care for a Family Member with Serious Chronic Mental Illness: A Qualitative Enquiry
title_full Challenges of Providing Home Care for a Family Member with Serious Chronic Mental Illness: A Qualitative Enquiry
title_fullStr Challenges of Providing Home Care for a Family Member with Serious Chronic Mental Illness: A Qualitative Enquiry
title_full_unstemmed Challenges of Providing Home Care for a Family Member with Serious Chronic Mental Illness: A Qualitative Enquiry
title_short Challenges of Providing Home Care for a Family Member with Serious Chronic Mental Illness: A Qualitative Enquiry
title_sort challenges of providing home care for a family member with serious chronic mental illness: a qualitative enquiry
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7696437/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33202649
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17228440
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