Addressing the psychological problems experienced by brain death donor's family members: a qualitative-quantitative study

Organ donation is a very difficult decision for families. Families of brain death patients are facing difficult and damaging stages of experiencing and understanding the brain death, and at the same time they also encounter the crisis of decision about organ donation. Quantitative methods and questionnaires have been used for identification of psychological problems in most studies, but perception of people’s mentality and experiences with common quantitative approach is not possible. Thus we decided to combine both quantitative and qualitative methods for deeper understanding of the psychological problems of donor’s family, to help them in making this difficult decision.
This study was performed by combining investigations. Quantitative data and donor’s family view were evaluated through questionnaire and interviews, respectively.
Qualitative results were classified in three general concepts: unknowns-fear, doubt-dependency, and excellence. Each of these concepts was divided into smaller profile. Knowledge, concerns, unknowns, dealing with family and the therapist relationship were in the subgroup of unknowns; fear of regret, the chances of recovery, rejection of others', beliefs, and obsessive thoughts were in the subgroup of doubt and fear; and acceptance of reality, altruism, religious beliefs, growing up in difficult circumstances, interests and expectations, and emotional relationships were in the subgroup of development and dependence. In the quantitative results members of the families of 224 brain death patients were evaluated. The mean age of the participants in this study was 37/13 ± 60/35 years. The mean age of patients was 51/21 ± 82/44 years. Among all the demographic characteristics of individuals only the level of education was associated with psychological disorders (P> 0.05). Children’s anxiety was also significantly higher than the other family members’ (P Quantitative and qualitative results of the psychological problems of families of brain-dead organ donors showed that because of different experiences of families, lack of awareness, harmful levels of anxiety and depression, it is necessary to appropriately support families in this crisis situations. All of them are in need of medical team sympathy and in this way we must help them to find an awareness of their unknowns, thus better understanding of these conditions is provided. By strengthening the humanitarian morale of the people, the incidence of inappropriate thoughts and confounding factors in the adoption of this crisis would reduce.