Community Based Family Intervention module for The Caregivers of Persons with Schizophrenia

TITLE OF THE STUDY: Community Based Family Intervention module for The Caregivers of Persons with Schizophrenia. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY: Schizophrenia is a severe, persistent and disabling chronic mental disorder affecting more than 21 million people worldwide and has a high disease burden. Family caregivers play crucial roles in taking care of people experiencing schizophrenia in the community. This study aims to explore the needs of family caregivers of people experiencing schizophrenia in the communities of Assam in terms of the burdens of care and further need for support in order to provide guidance to health care providers regarding how to target therapeutic interventions for families of individuals experiencing schizophrenia. The family may itself be burdened by the enormous hardships created by the person with schizophrenia. An illness like schizophrenia is serious and disabling and causes an emotional and financial brunt on the supporting family members. AIM: The proposed study aims to explore the needs of the caregivers of persons with schizophrenia with a view to develop a Family Intervention Module based on Expressed Emotion and to test the efficacy of that module among caregivers of Schizophrenia through pilot testing. METHODOLOGY: The proposed study is going to adopt a mixed method approach where the 1 st phase will be conducted in qualitative (Phenomenological) design to assess the needs of the caregiver which will provide the basis to develop the Family intervention module. Data will be collected from a combination of participants i.e. caregivers of persons with Schizophrenia visiting various Community extension camps organized by LGBRIMH in 4-6 focused group discussion by using a semi structured interview guide. Phase 2: will be decided after the need assessment. Tools: Socio-demographic profile of the caregivers and clinical variables of the persons with schizophrenia and a semi structured interview guide will be used in phase I. ANALYSIS: Based on the transcripts from the interview after coding and recoding, through inductive content analysis, themes and subthemes will be identified for phase I. CONCLUSION: The symptoms not only impact patient but also the family members and the community in turn. From the literature it was found that nursing interventions along with the psychopharmacologic agent and somatic treatment were found to be effective for treatment of negative symptoms. Therefore, the researcher wants to develop a module comprising of nursing interventions with the aim to improve the quality of life and attitude of the primary care givers.