family caregivers burden and its related factors among iranian elderly psychiatric patients’ caregivers

Background: providing care for an old person with a psychiatric disorder is a long-term and stressful process exerting negative outcomes on the caregivers' physical, psychological, and social health. objectives: the aim of the study was to determine the burden among family caregivers of psychiatric elderly and its related factors. methods: this descriptive study was conducted on 200 elderly psychiatric patients via convenient sampling, referring to the zare teaching psychiatric hospital of sari, iran. the sampling lasted from june to mid-november, 2015. two questionnaires of demographics (the elderly and caregivers) and zarit burden interview were used to collect the data. the data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, such as independent t-test, analysis of variance (anova) and scheffe post hoc test. results: the results indicated that the mean of the caregivers’ age was 51.24 ± 12.16. ninety-four percent of the caregivers were married, and 49% had higher diploma education. sixty-seven percent reported average economic status. the findings showed 68% of caregivers came up with mild to severe burden. according to the demographics, the hours of care per week (p = 0.001) and having other psychiatric patients in the family (p = 0.006) were related to the burden. conclusions: significantly high caregivers’ burden can overshadow the risk of low quality of care the psychiatric elderly patients and expose their caregivers’ psychological health to danger. thus, it seems that community-oriented interventions are required to reduce the burden and boost long-term quality of care by informal caregivers, such as patients’ families.