Burden of Care among Primary Caregivers of Patients with Schizophrenia

There have been many studies reporting the cross cultural variations on burden of care and its predictors. The present study was aimed to rate the primary caregivers on Burden of care and find the relation ship between different variables which might be the potential predictor of burden of care including Expressed Emotions (EE), gender and financial conditions from Pakistan’s cultural perspective, assuming that among the primary caregivers who score high on burden of care would be high on EE as well. It was also assumed that burden of care would be associated with risk for depression in caregivers along with the assumption that some of the illness variables and demographic variables of both the patients and the caregivers would be associated with burden of care. A purposive sample of 24 patients with schizophrenia was drawn from psychiatric wards of hospitals in Lahore and assessed for positive and negative symptoms and one primary caregiver of each patient was interviewed and rated for burden of care, EE and depression. It was found that majority of the caregivers (54%) were high on burden of care Burden of care and EE emerged as significant predictors of each others.