Mental health carers

Background: Family carers provide significant support to people with a mental illness; yet may experience poor mental and physical health themselves. Among limited research addressing the physical health of carers, studies of carers of people with dementia and young people with psychosis suggest increased risk of chronic diseases in conjunction with higher levels of potentially modifiable lifestyle risk behaviours.

The use of an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Schema group intervention with the mental health carer population has a strong justification: 1) There is a theoretical rationale for the role of experiential avoidance and negative expectations of relationships (and associated cognitive fusion) in underpinning mental health carers interpersonal problems; 2) Correlational data demonstrates that the processes targeted by ACT (i.e. experiential avoidance) and Schema therapy (i.e.