Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe elderly parental caregivers’ perceptions of their healthy children providing care for siblings with chronic mental illness. An additional purpose was to identify the presence of stigma perpetuated by the siblings towards family members with chronic mental illness.
Methods: A secondary data analysis was conducted on data from a qualitative study which explored parental caregivers’ perception of stigma as experienced by family members with chronic mental illness. The participants attended an educational program focused on the stigma of mental illness. Data were obtained from a convenience sample of 18 caregivers. Institutional Review Board approval and informed consent were obtained for the study. The data for the secondary analysis were from the original transcripts and were analyzed using Elo and Kyngas’ content analysis procedure.
Results: Descriptive statistics were compiled from the demographic data. The findings revealed that 16 elderly caregivers addressed their concerns related to the burden they were placing on their healthy adult children to provide care for the siblings with mental illness. Ten participants discussed their concerns of potential abuse occurring when a sibling assumed a caregiver role.
Findings revealed the participants’ concerns about the dynamics of the new care giver-care receiver relationship, as well as perpetuation of stigma experienced by the family member with mental illness. Four themes emerged from the data: caregiver burden, potential for abuse, rewards needed by siblings to undertake the care giving role, and the experience of social stigma from siblings.
Implications and Conclusions:
The parental caregivers expressed strong concerns about arranging care for their adult child with mental illness after they could no longer be the caregivers. Issues related to the reluctance of siblings assuming the care giving role presented a harsh reality to the parents. There was fear of verbal and physical abuse by the sibling caregivers towards the mentally ill family members. There was acknowledgement of the possibility of caregivers not intervening to prevent the day-to-day reality of social stigma occurring for the adult siblings with serious mental illness. The perceived consequences of relying on institutions and state-funded facilities for care were viewed by parents as undesirable places where discrimination and violation of human rights could occur. Additional research is needed to further understand what happens to adults with chronic mental illness after they no longer have parental caregivers and cannot live in their familiar communities.