Care of Schizophrenic Patient is a Burden among Primary Caregivers: Review Article

Caregiver is the person who involves in direct care for schizophrenic patient. However, when care is provided for long time, caregiver may experiences the burden.

The purpose was to critically review the studies related to burden among caregivers of schizophrenic patients.

A literatures were searched from databases: Pubmed, CINAHL, and Science Direct. Keywords used to retrieve literature include caregiver burden and schizophrenic patient. Searching was limited in English language, full text article.

Fifteen studies were reviewed in this paper. The result showed that the caregivers caring for patients with schizophrenia experience burden. Burden was defined as a negative impact of caring for the impaired person experienced by caregiver on their activity (objective burden) or feeling (subjective burden) that involves emotional, physical health, social life, and financial status.

Definition of burden has quite same meaning. Most of studies cannot be generalized due to small sample used in the study and that too conducted in western countries. For further research, the correlation between burden and resources of family caregiver should be investigated particularly in Asian country especially in India.

Psycho education, relaxation techniques, positive coping strategies are needed to reduce the burden among caregivers.