Psychosocial context of functioning in families where a patient with endogenous mental disorder lives

Abstract

Studying psychosocial features of family caregivers is of particular importance, which is explained by the need for appropriate system of medical-psychological support directly for family members of patients in order to provide optimal disclosure of family social-therapeutic potential. In total 243 family caregivers of patients with paranoid schizophrenia (168 people) and affective disorders (75 people) were included into the study. Control group comprised 55 mentally healthy persons. Experience of Caregiving Inventory (ECI) by G. Szmukler et al. (1994) and Structured Interview Scale of Family Members Attitude to the Disease (psychiatric diagnosis) in a Family Member by V.A. Abramov, I.V. Zhigulina, T.L. Riapolova were used as psychological testing tools. Revealed features indicate that within the process of development of an endogenous mental disorder in a family member, level of family burden gradually increases while emotional, individual psychological and communicative resources of family members get simultaneously exhausted. Study of typology of family caregivers’ attitude to a mental illness diagnosis in a family member, made it possible to distinguish certain features that were determined by the overall duration of pathological process in patients. Thus, during the early stages of disease (up to 4 years), an adequate type of attitude prevailed, which creates a favorable basis for medical-psychological interventions. Within the pathological process development, family caregivers developed dramatizing and negative types of attitude (P <0.001). Accepting of the disease by family and conscious attitude towards its manifestations, combined with psychological readiness to participate in providing psychosocial rehabilitation and readapting of mentally sick family member are important factors in treatment of endogenous mental disorders.