Family Caregivers Burden and its Related Factors Among Iranian Elderly Psychiatric Patient's Caregivers

Providing care for an old person with a psychiatric disorder is a long-term and stressful process exerting negative outcomes on the caregiver's physical, psychological, and social health.
The aim of the study was to determine the burden among family caregivers of psychiatric elderly and its related factors.
This descriptive study was conducted on 200 elderly psychiatric patients via convenient sampling, referring to the zare teaching psychiatric hospital of Sari, Iran. The sampling lasted from June to mid-November, 2015. Two questionnaires of demographics (the elderly and caregivers) and Zarit Burden Interview were used to collect the data. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, such as independent t-test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Scheffe Post Hoc test.
The results indicated that the mean of the caregivers’ age was 51.24 ± 12.16. Ninety-four percent of the caregivers were married, and 49% had higher diploma education. Sixty-seven percent reported average economic status. The findings showed 68% of caregivers came up with mild to severe burden. According to the demographics, the hours of care per week (P = 0.001) and having other psychiatric patients in the family (P = 0.006) were related to the burden.
Significantly high caregivers’ burden can overshadow the risk of low quality of care the psychiatric elderly patients and expose their caregivers’ psychological health to danger. Thus, it seems that community-oriented interventions are required to reduce the burden and boost long-term quality of care by informal caregivers, such as patients’ families.