Awareness of Need and Degree of Participation for the Role of Family Members as Psychiatric Patients Treatment Partners, and the Burden in Chronic Mentally Ill Patients&apos; Family
Authors: Yang Soo , Jang MHnva 
Published: September 2024

A better understanding of the therapeutic role and the burden on the family has become increasingly important because many families assume a major role in the care of their relatives who have mentally ill patients.Especially, care of psychiatric patients in Korea is family-centered. Therefore, the burden of family caregivers is severe, and families have strong affects in the treatment of psychiatric patients. However, due to various reasons, families lack understanding of patient status and diseases so they follow instructions of physicians passively and do not even think about participating in the treatment plans for patients.This study was designed to identify the quantities of burden perceived by the family caregivers, and to obtain basic data about need awareness and degree of participation of family members as treatment partners in the treatment of psychiatric patients. The data were collected from July 19 to September 27, 1999, and the subjects of the research were 106 family members of psychiatric patients who were either hospitalized or received outpatient treatment in 4 mental health centers and one psychiatric hospital located in Kyunggi Province and Seoul.The researchers developed and used a questionnaire as the evaluation tool to determine the awareness of need and degree of actual participation in family members. Also, subjective and objective burden measurement was used to measure burden of family caregiveis. This tool originally developed by Montgomery(1985) and used by Choi (1997), and revised by researchers to 4-point Likert Scale.The results are as follows.1. Although family was highly aware the need for the role of family members as treatment partners, the actual degree of family member participating was low.2. As the degree of need awareness of family roles according to each area, families felt that they are needed most in the matters relating to admission and hospitalization of patients, followed by their roles at the time of discharge and daily life after discharge, but showed low awareness on roles relating to family association.3. Participation of family members as treatment partners was seen most with matters related to discharge, and showed lowest participation rate in matters concerning family association. 4. The role awareness and participation degree of family members were significantly different according to the occupations of family members, and the degree of participation was significantly different according to marital status, forms of medical coverage, relationship with the patient, and opinions on patient prognosis.5. The mean score of the perceived burden of the family caregivers was 2.64. which is higher than the mode score of the instrument.6. The burden of the family caregivers was significantly different according to gender, marital status, education level, occupation, relationship with the patient, and opinions on patient prognosis.7. There was a significant correlation between the role awareness and participation degree as treatment partners of family members, and there was not a significant correlation between the burden and the participation degree.As seen with these results, by raising the awareness of family members as treatment partners, the study suggests that the area for family members to involve in more active patient treatment and care need to be expanded, and we also need systematic efforts such as to study ways that relieve the burden of the family and make family members to participate in treatment and care of patients.