RESUMO
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.
RESUMO
Background :Alcohol is a ordinary commodity, used since time immemorial. Psychiatric co morbidities have a high prevalence among patients of alcohol dependence and often pose challenges in their diagnosis and treatment and are found to be a major contributor to relapses. They raise a challenging question of how to provide the best integrated treatment to address both.Aim : To study the socio demographic profile and psychiatric co morbidity in patients of alcohol dependence syndrome.Objectives: 1. To study the socio demographic profile of alcohol dependence patients2. To determine the prevalence and type of psychiatric co-morbidity in alcohol dependent patients.Methodology : Aconsecutive sample of 100 Alcohol Dependence Syndrome patients attending outpatient were selected. Aquestionnaire was administered to collect sample and alcohol dependence characteristics. psychiatric co-morbidity evaluation was done using Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI Plus) and the diagnosis was confirmed by using ICD-10.Results :Majority of the subjects were young adults with a mean age of 42 years, were illiterates, married, employed, belonged to rural background and from lower socio-economic status. psychiatric co-morbidities were present in 33% of population. More of affective spectrum (18%) as compared with lesser numbers of patients in the anxiety (11%) or psychotic spectrum (4%). psychiatric co-morbidity is significantly greater in those who are unemployed.Conclusions:The psychiatric co-morbidity was present in 33% of the population studied. More of affective spectrum, followed by anxiety spectrum and less number of them in psychotic spectrum. All psychiatric co-morbidities may need to be identified for patients diagnosed as alcohol dependence who present with longer duration of drinking and unemployed for effective and comprehensive management