BURDEN OF MENTAL ILLNESS ON FAMILY MEMBERS, CARE-GIVERS AND THE COMMUNITY

Objective: To determine the burden of mental illness in the family/caregiver and thecommunity.Design: A cross-sectional descriptive study.Setting: Rehabilitation centres, community day centres, resettlement villages and in thecommunity in three provinces (Harare, Bulawayo and Masvingo), Zimbabwe.Subjects: A sample size comprising sixty six care-givers and 126 patients were consecutivelyinterviewed for the study.Results: The care-givers had a mean ± s.d. age of 48.8 ±15.7 years. The majority were females(80.3%), married males, 76.9% (p=0.073), unemployed females, 94.3% (p=0.0004) andparents of the patients accounted for 51.5%. Many respondents believed that the cause ofmental illness was witchcraft (31%), they experienced financial constraints (63.6%), andspent a lot of money on food (56.1%). Patients were younger than their caregivers, with amean ± s.d. age of 37.7 ± 12.8 years and mostly on medications (91.3%).Conclusion: The caregivers were mainly women and unemployed, whereas patients weremostly male. Caregivers were faced with multiple problems, but they were more tolerant topatients’ behaviour than the community at large