ABSTRACT
Introduction: Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness,resulting in impairing and debilitating worldwide. The primarycare giver is expected to meet all the deficiencies of the sickrelative leading to caregiver burden. So the present studyaims to study the burden and factors influencing them, so asto decrease the burden, facilitate better prognosis. Currentresearch aimed to study the caregiver burden in the spousesof patients with schizophrenia with the objectives to study thecaregiver burden in the spouses of patients with schizophreniaand to study the factors influencing the caregiver burden.Material and methods: A consecutive sample of spousesof 100 patients with schizophrenia were taken at IMH,hyderabad. A semi structured questionnaire was administeredto collect the socio demographic details. Followed by IDEASfor measuring and quantifying the mental illness, later BAS(burden assessment scale), to assess the burden. Statisticalanalysis was done using SPSS.Results: The mean total burden is 82.68, majority werehaving moderate burden (76%). Severe burden was seen inundifferentiated schizophrenic patients, those with longerduration of illness (>10 years) and with severe disability,which were statistically significant (p<0.001). More burdenwas seen with female gender, self employed spouses, financialdependence on patient. Mental illness in the spouse and havingabused by the patient were found to be statistically significant.Conclusion: Majority of the spouses experienced moderatelevel of burden. Factors like type of schizophrenia, duration ofillness and severity of illness are significantly associated withlevel of burden. Psycho- therapeutic techniques like psychoeducation, family and couple therapy may help in bettercoping of spouses of mentally ill persons, to reduce burden.