SCHIZOPHRENIA AND EPILEPSY; EFFECTIVENESS OF RELAXATION TRAINING FOR CAREGIVERS OF PATIENTS

Abstract

Introduction: Persistently dealing with chronic mental illness makes the caregivers suffer from burden and mental health problems which are intensified if the caregiver is female. Therefore, there is need to improve the mental health of caregivers by using relaxation training in such a way that would reduce the burden of care in caregivers. Objectives: It is assumed that female caregivers would be differing significantly in mental health problems as compared to man. Relaxation training would improve mental health as compared to controlling the actual condition. High burden would have inverse relationship with GHQ's differential scores. There would be significant interaction between gender and burden, gender and training, burden and training, gender, burden and training. Study Design: A 2(Gender) X 2(Burden) X 2(Training) mixed factorial between subject design was used. Setting & Period: This study was conducted within 6 months of duration at the department of Psychiatry, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Lahore. Material & methods: Purposive Sample technique was used. Sample consisted of 40 women and 40 men out door patient's caregivers of schizophrenia and epilepsy at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Lahore. Their age ranged from 20 to 60 years (M = 35.05, SD = 0.89). We assessed caregiver's burden by using Urdu version of Burden of Assessment (BAS) along with BAS, we also recorded demographic information about the caregivers and assessed patients whom they served on ICD-10 and clinical diagnoses for schizophrenia and epilepsy. Inherent to the study was a General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) which measured health of all caregivers from different dimensions. It included somatic, anxiety & insomnia, social dysfunction, depression and psychological health of all caregivers. Compliant with a number of researchers, we design a training program to alleviate caregivers burden of health coping strategies, safeguard from unfounded options about the patients and the disease and maximize the efficiency in dealing with the patient and his/her disease. Results: Results found significant main effects on gender as women suffered from high burden and mental health problems as compared to men. A same significant main effect was also found for burden which increased health-related issues. Another significant main effect was found on training. The experimental group whom researcher provided relaxation training was significantly low on GHQ differential score as compared to controlled condition. Since we divided caregivers into high and low burden groups we found that general health of high burden group are more porn to degradation than low burden group. However, low health indicated on GHQ subscales is improved after training for both high and low burden group. Conclusions: We concluded that caregivers need to get substantial understanding of the patients disease and they need to get first-hand knowledge and training of what they are getting into when they are looking after diseased patients.