International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Abstract

Background: Resilience is the process of harnessing biological, psychosocial, structural and cultural resources to sustain wellbeing. If family members are resilient, they can overcome stress associated with providing care for a person having mental illness and preserve their own health and the health of their family.

Material & Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was undertaken on 100 adult family caregivers of patient having schizophrenia and its related disorders who were selected consecutively from out-patient clinics of department of psychiatry, in a selected hospital, New Delhi. The data were collected using subject information sheet for caregiver and patient, Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC) for assessing the resilience of caregivers and Brief psychiatric rating scale (BPRS) to assess the psychopathology of patient. The collected data was analyzed using STATA 14.0 software. Ethical clearance was obtained from ethics committee of the selected hospital, New Delhi.

Result: The mean age of caregivers and patients were 47.7(±11.5) and 29.8(±9.3) respectively. Sixty five percent of the family caregivers were male. Most of the caregivers were having high score on resilience scale, with mean scores of 72.14(±16.1). Caregivers who were spouse were found to be more resilient as compared to other caregivers who were giving care to patient having schizophrenia and related disorders (p=0.0006).The caregivers who had only one child are more resilient than those who had more than two children (p=0.04). A significant association was found between the resilience levels of caregivers with the age of the patients (p=0.003), marital status of the patients (p=0.002), occupation of patients (p=0.0002) and with monthly income of the patients (p=0.008).

Conclusion: A family caregiver caring for mentally ill patient constantly experience various challenges, be it in caring issues or in meeting their own needs. Most of the study subjects have shown good levels of resilience which is a protective factor for their own mental health. However the mental health care workers need to counsel and guide the family caregivers to enhance their resilience level whenever they visit the clinics for follow ups.

Biography

Bobby Syiemlieh has completed his graduation from College of Nursing, NEIGRIHMS, Meghalaya, India, as well as Post-Graduation in Psychiatric Nursing from AIIMS, New Delhi, India. He is currently working as Nursing Officer at AIIMS, Raipur, India. His area of interest includes Preventive Psychiatry, Addiction Psychiatry, and Severe Mental Illness.He has attended and presented scientific papers in national and international conferences.

E-mail: bobbysyiemlieh8@gmail.com