Relapse Prevention among Caregivers of Patients with Schizophrenia

The biggest untapped resource in health care is the patient and their family. Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder which accounts for much suffering of those affected and their families, in addition to a cost to society estimated as 1.1% of the total burden of disease (in terms of DALYs - disability adjusted life-years) and 2.8% of the total YLDs (years lived with disability).(1)The ultimate goal of the treatment of people with schizophrenia is the productive reintegration into mainstream society. The care of persons with schizophrenia can be provided at community level through education and psychosocial interventions to help patients and families cope with the illness and its complications, and also to prevent relapses. The aim is to assess the effectiveness of structured teaching programme on knowledge regarding schizophrenia relapse prevention among care givers in National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences.

The researcher adopted Pre experimental, one group pre-test, post-test design. Based on the sampling criteria the researcher selected 46 care givers and 30 of them were selected on the lottery method for the analysis of the study scores. The educational programme was conducted in groups in six sessions. The tools, Socio demographic profile of both caregivers and patients and Knowledge Assessment Checklist of Schizophrenia Relapse Prevention were used to collect data. Analysis is done by Paired t-Test by Comparison of pre and post test values for the effectiveness of the structured programme and to check the association with socio demographic variables Pearson correlation and independent t-Test were employed.

Paired t-Test revealed that there was a statistically significant increase in the knowledge regarding Schizophrenia relapse prevention among care givers. The Pearson correlation and independent t-Test revealed that there is no association with the socio demographic variables of the caregivers ,but there was a positive correlation with between knowledge gain and the number of relapses i.e., more the number of relapses higher is the knowledge, however this is not statistically significant.

This study reveals that a short educational programme would be beneficial for the care givers who play an important role in the life of the patients with schizophrenia and could capably reduce the number of relapses. This study has implications in the nursing service, research, administration and education.