The Relationship between Social Support and General Health in Family Caregivers of Patients with Mental Illnesses

The families of caregivers of patients with mental illnesses have numerous stresses, experience moderate to high burden, and often receive inadequate professional support from the mental health team. Effective family functioning in these families may be influenced by a variety of psychosocial factors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between social support and general health in family caregivers of patients with mental illnesses.
In this correlational study, 199 family caregivers of patients with mental illnesses were selected by convenience sampling from Farshchian Psychiatry Hospital in Hamedan, during year 2015. The data were collected using demographic, Fillips Social Support, and General Health questionnaires. Data were analyzed by descriptive and spearman regression correlation.
the results indicated that social support in 45.7% of the subjects was undesirable and general health in 89.9% was weak. There was a significant relationship between these 2 variables (P = 0.001). The friends interfering domain was more undesirable than the other domains of social support. Individual life health domain was weaker than other domains of general health. The supportive interfering domain from the general health domains had the greatest correlation with social support (P = 0.001).
General health was related to social support. Thus, altering the policies with the objective of increasing social support, especially for the family of caregivers of patients with mental illnesses, could result in the promotion of their health and well-being.
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