Relationship of caregiver burden with coping strategies, social support, psychological morbidity, and quality of life in the caregivers of schizophrenia.

AIM: To evaluate the relationship of caregiver burden as assessed by using Hindi Involvement Evaluation Questionnaire (IEQ) with coping strategies, social support, psychological morbidity, and quality of life of caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. Additionally, the relationship of caregiver-burden with sociodemographic variables, and clinical variables, including severity of psychopathology and level of functioning of patients, was studied.

METHODOLOGY: The study included 100 patients with schizophrenia and their caregivers recruited by purposive random sampling.

RESULTS: Among the four domains of IEQ, highest number of correlations emerged with tension domain. Tension domain had positive correlation with the caregiver being single, time spent in caregiving per day, and use of avoidance, collusion, and coercion as coping strategies. Additionally, tension domain was associated with poor quality of life in all the domains of WHO-QOL Bref and was associated with higher psychological morbidity. Worrying urging-I domain of IEQ correlated with frequency of visits, higher use of problem focused coping and poor physical health as per the WHO-QOL Bref. Worrying urging-II domain of IEQ had positive correlation with higher level of positive symptoms, lower level of functioning of the patient, younger age of caregiver, caregiver being unmarried, and higher use problem focused and seeking social support as coping strategies. Supervision domain of IEQ correlated positively with lower income, being an unmarried caregiver, from an urban locality and non-nuclear family. Supervision domain was associated with poor physical health as assessed by WHO-QOL Bref.

CONCLUSION: Caregiving burden, especially tension is associated with use of maladaptive coping strategies, poor quality of life and higher level of psychological morbidity in caregivers.