A Study to Assess the Stress and Coping Strategies Adopted by Primary Care Givers of Schizophrenia Patient

Background: Schizophrenia is one of the most devastating psychiatric disorders that affects about 1 % of the world population. Schizophrenia represents 1.3 % of disability life years overall and fourth leading cause of disability in the developed world and 90 % of populations are untreated in developing countries.Objective of the study: To assess the stress and coping strategies adopted by primary care givers of schizophrenia patient. Material and method: The study adopted a descriptive research design, 100 samples were recruited using convenient sampling technique. Socio Demographic Proforma, Perceived Stress Scale to assess the stress and Brief COPE scale to assess the coping strategies were used to collect data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analysis the data. Result: The study revealed that majority of the samples that was 59 % participants were female, 59 %were age group of more than 40 years, 63 % belongs to Hindu religion, 40 % were educated up to Higher Secondary, 72 % were married, 35 % of samples monthly family income were more than 40, 000, 73 % samples belonged to nuclear family, 38 % of samples had private service, 69 % of samples were from urban area, 59 % samples were parents of the patients, 43 % were providing care to patients since 7-10 years. Majority i.e.88 % of the caregivers suffers from moderate level of stress and only 12 % feels high stress. It also revealed that out of 100 samples, self distraction (7.66) was used most frequently by the caregivers to cope with the stress, denial (2.04) and self blame (2.04) were least frequently used by the caregivers to cope with the stress.Study revealed that there is a moderately negative significant co- relation between stress and coping strategies (r-value= -0.519, p-value=0.000) at 0.05 level of significant. Conclusion: Study concluded with the clear suggestion that stress can be leads to psychiatric illness in future life. Therefore, immediate action should take to reduce the st