Abstract:
According to world health organization mental health is a state of well-being in which an
individual can realize his or her own abilities, interact positively with others, cope with the
stressors of life and study, work productively and fruitfully, and contribute to his or her family
and community. Caregivers of mentally ill patients experience both subjective and objective
types of burden. The aim of this study was to examine the psychological burden of care givers of
mentally ill patients attending at their follow up at psychiatry clinic, Jimma university medical
center, southwest Ethiopia, 2021. A hospital based cross sectional study was conducted in Jimma
Medical center from June 1/ 2021 to July 1/ 2021. Non-probability sampling which is consecutive
sampling technique was employed to select the study participants. A study was conducted on 409 care
givers of mentally ill patients attending their follow up at psychiatric clinic, JUMC. Data was entered
into Epi data 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 25 for analysis. Descriptive and analytical methods was
carried out, frequency tables, graphs and pie charts used for the descriptive result. Both bivariate and
multivariable logistic regression analysis employed to identify the contributing factors to psychological
burden of care givers of patients with mentally ill patients. Statistical significance was declared at P value < 0.05 in multivariable logistic regression analyses. A total of 409 of the respondents were
interviewed in this study, yielded 95.8 % of the response rate. The proportion of psychological burden
among care givers of mentally ill patients was 219 (55.9%) 95% CI 51.5-60.5% of which 16.8% , 30.6%,
42.1 and 10.5% were little or no burden, mild to moderate burden, moderate to severe burden and
having severe psychological burden respectively. In multi-variable logistic regression analysis
occupational status, age of care givers, family income, duration of giving care for the patient and giving
care for other family members were having associated with psychological burden of care givers. In this
study one out of two care givers had psychological burden among care givers giving care for
mentally ill patients. Therefore creating community awareness about how to handling peoples
living with mental illness at large and understanding of the care givers burden while giving care
for the patient should be considered.
