Psychoeducation Program for Chinese Family Carers of Members With Schizophrenia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a psychoeducation program for Chinese family carers of members with schizophrenia in Hong Kong. The participants consisted of 64 carers of clients with schizophrenia who were recruited from a local mental hospital and randomly assigned to the experimental and control arm (32 each). The experimental group received a psychoeducation program developed and implemented by mental health nurses based on Atkinson and Coia’s framework. The control group received routine care. The outcome measures were family burden, self-efficacy, and perception of social support. The findings showed that the experimental group had more improvement on their perception of burden of care (t = 5.25, p< .01), self-efficacy (t = -7.16, p< .01), and social support (t= -5.61, p < .01). This study supports psychoeducation as an effective nursing intervention for Chinese family carers.