An Investigation on Psychological Burden, Factors and Coping Mechanisms among Caregivers with Mental Ill Patients Attending Follow up At JUMC, Psychiatric Clinic

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.