Family Caregiver's Attitude toward Long-Term Care of Elderly with Psychiatric Disorders and Associated Factors

Providing care for the elderly with psychiatric disorders is a long-term and stressful process leading to some negative outcomes on the caregivers’ physical, psychological and social health. In addition, it seems that the caregivers’ attitude toward providing long-term cares affects their performance and behavior.
The current study aimed to outline the caregivers’ attitude toward providing long-term cares for the elderly patients with psychiatric disorders.
Patients and The current descriptive study was conducted on 200 elderly patients with psychiatric disorders, referred to the Zare teaching psychiatric hospital in Sari, Iran. The participants were selected via convenient sampling method. The sampling lasted from June to mid-November in 2015 .Two questionnaires were applied to collect data , the demographics (the elderly and caregivers) and the short form of Klein attitude toward the provision of long-term care scale (ATPLTC scale). The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics such as independent T-test, ANOVA and Scheffe test.
The study results indicated that the mean ± SD age of the caregivers was 51.24 ± 12.16 years. Ninety-four percent of the caregivers were married and the education level in 49% was above high school diploma. Sixty-seven percent of them reported average economic status. The findings showed that 71% of the caregivers had negative attitude toward long-term care giving. There was a significant relationship between caregivers` education level (P = 0.017), other family members with psychiatric disorder (P = 0.036) and the weekly hours caring for the patient (P = 0.032).
The caregivers’ negative attitude toward caring for the elderly patients with psychiatric disorders is an alarm for the mental healthcare policy makers and psychiatric/mental health team workers. To promote the mental health among the elderly patients with psychiatric disorders and those of their caregivers, it is necessary to develop family-oriented education, counseling and supportive programs and perform more studies on the issue.