Quality of Life (QoL) and Its Associated Factors Among Caregivers of Patients with Schizophrenia

Background: Schizophrenia is a chronic, severely disabling psychiatric illness involving a complex set of disturbances in thinking, perception, affect and social behavior resulting in physical, psychological and social problems related to the disease and the side effects of medication which put immense amount of physical, emotional and financial distress on the family members of patients leading to poor quality of life. Aim and Objectives: To assess the quality of life (QoL) among caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. Methodology: A quantitative cross sectional research design was used. 246 caregivers were selected by using purposive sampling technique. Standardized self-administered questionnaire by WHO QoL BREF scale and Multidimensional scale of perceived social support (MSPSS) were used to assess the QoL and perceived social support of the caregivers respectively. Results: The study result shows that out of 246 caregivers, mean value in physical (50.84+11.36), psychological (55.47+15.12), social (57.74+19.00) and environmental (52.25+14.86) domain. There was a significant association between the QoL domains and caregiver’s age, education and relationship with patient. A significant positive correlation was found between WHO QoL BREF scale and MSPSS (<0.05). Conclusion: The caregivers had good QoL in social, psychological and environmental domains and poor QoL in physical domain. The mean QoL in this study was lower than that found in studies from India (Cuttack) and Malaysia. This difference can be attributed to overburdened caregiving task, cultural differences, caregiver’s perception of their own wellbeing, expectation for the government to assume responsibility to reduce society’s mental health burden. Key words: Schizophrenia, caregiver, WHO QoL BREF scale, MSPSS