The Effect of Resilience Training on Reducing the Care Burden of Families with Schizophrenic Patients

Schizophrenia is the most severe chronic psychiatric disorder that associated with impaired social and occupational abilities. In addition to the patient this disorder also affects the entire family system. The care burden is the psychological, physical and social stress that comes to caregivers as a result of long-term care. Therefore it causes many problems such as burnout, anxiety, and depression for caregivers. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of resilience training on reducing the care burden of families with schizophrenia.

This study was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test and a randomized controlled group. The statistical population includes all caregivers of schizophrenia patients referred to Roozbeh psychiatric hospital in Tehran in 2019. After obtaining written consent, thirty-six people who like to participate in the study were divided into experimental and control groups by random sampling method. After deducting the drops, fifteen people were in the experimental group and eighteen people in the control group. The research instrument was the Zarit burden interview and intervention protocol, then Henderson and Milleston resilience components training program was applied to the experimental group. The control group received no intervention. Data were analyzed by SPSS software using ANCOVA.

The results showed that the social group intervention in the experimental group with the approach of resilience training was statistically significantly different from the control group and it was able to significantly increase the total resilience score compared to the control group.(P<0/05)

Group social work interventions aimed at increasing resilience in caregivers of psychiatric disorders can be effective in increasing resilience and provide a basis for improving the quality of life of these people. The results of this study help social workers to use the resilience model to promote health, increase social, economic, and welfare performance and improve the level of tolerance of caregivers; leading to educating and working with families of schizophrenia patients.