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- Title
Assessment of Caregiver Experiences and Psychoeducational Needs of Chinese Families for Patients with Chronic Mental Illnesses: A Pilot Study.
- Authors
Chow, Wendy; Andermann, Lisa; Bedi, Harleen; Law, Samuel
- Abstract
Social support networks and family relationships have a profound impact on patients' self-esteem, attitude towards illness and level of functioning. Familybased interventions have been shown to improve illness outcomes by strengthening family relationships, breaking the social stigma associated with mental illnesses and reducing caregiver burden by building a strong social support network. This project aimed to learn the experiences of families from Chinese ethnicity in caring for their family members with mental illness, and the services they find most valuable in assisting them in their role as caregivers. Ten Chinese caregivers and nine clients with chronic mental illnesses participated in a two-hour-long focus group. A self-developed questionnaire was utilized to ask open-ended questions from participants on their experience and major concerns as a caregiver for a family member with chronic mental illness. Grounded theory methodology was used to conduct a thematic analysis of the collected descriptive data. Our results showed that: (1) caregivers experience a lack of available resources to learn about the medical illness of their family members; (2) linguistic and cultural barriers limit their access to health resources; and (3) more culturally informed approaches are needed to optimize rehabilitation and integration of psychiatric patients from ethnic minorities into the society. The particular Assertive Community Treatment Team (ACTT) service utilized by the participant caregivers in this study provided ethno-specific services, which were found to be a valuable resource by Chinese caregivers. The results from this study will argue the importance of community mental health services such as ACTT and others in developing family psychoeducation and assistance programs to meet the identified needs of ethnic minority caregivers at large.
- Subjects
CHINA; CONTENT analysis; FAMILIES; FOCUS groups; GROUNDED theory; INTERVIEWING; MENTAL illness; REHABILITATION of people with mental illness; QUESTIONNAIRES; RESEARCH evaluation; SOCIAL networks; ETHNOLOGY research; QUALITATIVE research; DATA analysis; EMPIRICAL research; FAMILY relations; QUANTITATIVE research; NARRATIVES; THEMATIC analysis; PSYCHOEDUCATION
- Publication
University of Toronto Medical Journal, 2015, Vol 92, Issue 3, p66
- ISSN
0833-2207
- Publication type
Article