Psychosocial Problems in Caregivers of Persons with Mental Illness: A Meta-analytic Review

Background: Mental illness may cause a variety of psychosocial problems in care givers. Aim and Objective: To review caregiver studies in persons with mental illness, in India and outside India, in the last two decades and to find out potential challenges associated with caregiving. Methods: Using keywords, we performed searches of electronic databases (PubMed, IndMed, PsychInfo, Science-Direct, Science Hub, and Google Scholar) and Internet sources, as well as and a manual search in the bibliography of the retrieved articles to identify potential original research articles on caregiving in mental illnesses. Results: Out of 714 studies, only 83 studies were included in the meta-analysis. The sample size of the caregiver studies ranged from 20 to 500, with the majority of the hospital-based studies, conducted in psychosis/schizophrenia, Bipolar Affective Disorders and in Alzheimer’s Disorders. Challenges of caregiving highlighted were physical problems (such as complaints of palpitation, dizziness, and insomnia), psychological problems (irritability, anxiety, and depression), social problems (stigma, decreased social support, diminished reputation in society), and familial problems (poor family functioning, poor coping), care burden and issues related to resilience, family functioning and expressed emotions. Conclusion: Our findings broadly support interventions promoting social support in caregivers to prevent or alleviate the subjective burden and, specifically, to intervene on the promotion of perceived social support more than on the promotion of received social support when preventing or alleviating the burden.