Socio-demographic Correlates of Care Burden in Primary Caregivers of Persons with Schizophrenia: A Study from Northeast India

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a major mental disorder and requires a lot of care in the process of treatment. Thus, the role of primary caregiver becomes important and challenging, because they had to face both objective and subjective burden of care throughout the process of recovery. The study was designed to see the association of sociodemographic correlates with care burden in primary caregivers of persons with schizophrenia in northeast part of   India.Across sectional correlational descriptive study design was used for the present study and convenient sampling was used to collect responses from 200 adult primary caregivers of persons with Schizophrenia from LGBRIMH, Tezpur, Assam. They were assessed on a socio-demographic data sheet and Zarit Burden Interview. Permission to conduct the study was taken from the Institute Ethics Committee, LGBRIMH, Tezpur. Analysis was done using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version – 25. Severe level of care burden was found in the majority primary caregivers (63.0%). Correlation analysis showed that the age of patient was significantly negatively correlated with the care burden (r=-0.275, p<0.05) and was negatively correlated with the duration of care giving (r =-0.022). Care burden was found to be significantly positively correlated with the age of caregiver (r=0.180, p<0.01). Regression analysis showed that gender, the age of the patient, education and occupation of the caregiver significantly predicted the care burden perceived by caregivers of persons with Schizophrenia [F(6,193)=15.935, p=0.005]. Care burden is a major problem in long term caregiving; hence, proper psychosocial intervention may be planned to combat such difficulties in future.