Effect of Educational Supportive Program on Knowledge, Emotional Empathy, and Burden of Schizophrenic Patients' Caregivers

Abstract

Background: Schizophrenia is a chronic and inarguably one of the most debilitating psychiatric syndromes. Caregivers of Schizophrenic patients load different kinds of burdens among them. Empathy enables providing more humanized and better caregiving. Educational supportive program for patients and their families provide information and support to better understand and cope with illness. Aim: To investigate the effect of educational supportive program on knowledge, emotional empathy, and the burden of schizophrenic patients' caregivers. Design: A quasi-experimental research design was utilized in this study. Subjects: A purposive sample of 150 schizophrenic patients and their caregivers were included. Setting: The study was conducted at the outpatient clinic at Sohag Psychiatric Hospital for Mental Health. Tools of data collection: Three tools were used in this study: (1) Structured interviewing questionnaire, (2) Caregiver’s knowledge regarding Schizophrenia, (3) Burden Assessment Schedule (BAS), and (4) Multi-Dimensional Emotional Empathy Scale (MDEES). Results: The results showed that there was a high statistically significant improvement in caregiver's knowledge emotional empathy and burden of schizophrenic patients' caregivers observed post-educational supportive program intervention compared to pre-educational supportive program. There were strong positive correlations between the total levels of burden of the studied caregivers and their level of emotional empathy. Also, there was a strong correlation between the total levels of emotional empathy of the studied caregivers and their level of knowledge. Conclusion: The implementation of an educational supportive program has significantly improved schizophrenic patients' knowledge, emotional empathy, and burden. Recommendation: An educational supportive program is recommended to see as a better for family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia to improve their knowledge, and emotional empathy, and reduce their burden to help them cope and overcome their burden of caregiving.