Caregivers' Experience of Taking Care of Schizophrenic Outpatients

Paper

Friday, 21 July 2006

This presentation is part of : Psychiatric/Mental Health Issues and Strategies

Wen-Jiuan Yen, PhD¹, Ching-Hwa Teng, RN, MSN², and Shiou-Chih Tseng, BSN². (1) School of Nursing, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan, (2) Nursing Department, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan

Learning Objective #1: understand the experience of caregivers' experience of taking care of mentally ill patients from culture perspectives
Learning Objective #2: ispired to think about the importance of recruiting caregivers into patients'treatment program and also think about what services should be provided to the caregivers

The purpose of this study was to explore the caregiversˇ experience of taking care of schizophrenic outpatients. The result could provide a reference for mental health professionals to design holistic community mental health care for mentally ill patients. For this in-depth qualitative investigation of caregiversˇ experience of taking care of schizophrenic outpatients, 10 participants were recruited at OPD of psychiatric ward. Each participant provided informed consent and then engaged in a semi-structured, audio-taped interview of 1 hour duration. Narrative strategies were used to examine the data. In an initial iteration, events recounted in each interview were arranged in chronological order and a flow chart was constructed to examine developmental patterns and staging for each participant. Then the flow charts of chronological events of all five participants were compared and contrasted to identify similar and differing experiences across the sample. In the next step, verbatim of the interviews were coded thematically using content analysis. Caregiversˇ experience could be summarized as three stages: (1) initial stage refers to the caregiversˇ reactions toward dealing with patientsˇ bizarre behaviors, and information sources. Traditional Chinese religion is utilized commonly at this stage. (2) Diagnostic stage: caregivers suffer from a series of psychological reactions about caregiversˇ diagnosis. (3) Discharge stage: caregiversˇ worries, and their expectations. Family plays an important role for providing care to mentally ill patients, but experiences a heavy burden. The greatest contribution of this study is exposure of the issue of caregiversˇ experience as they are taking care of mentally ill patients. It is a wake up call for mental health professionals to provide care for caregivers.

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