Psychosis

Background: Many people diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar or other psychoses in England receive the majority of their healthcare from primary care. Primary care practitioners may not be well equipped to meet their needs and there is often poor communication with secondary care. Collaborative care is a promising alternative model but has not been trialled specifically with this service user group in England. Collaborative care for other mental health conditions has not been widely implemented despite evidence of its effectiveness.

Patient-initiated violence may pose a significant risk to the strength and longevity of informal caregiving relationships in psychosis. We aimed to assess caregiver reports of patient-initiated violence in early psychosis and to examine the relationship between violent incidents and appraisals of caregiving, perceived mental wellbeing in caregivers and Expressed Emotion (EE) in the caregiving relationship. Eighty psychosis caregivers were recruited via Early Intervention (EI) psychosis services in London, United Kingdom.

A modest association can be found between people with a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis (psychosis) and perpetrating acts of violence. When a person with psychosis does engage in violence, it is their informal carers, when compared to those from the general population, who are more likely to be the targets, and violence will often occur within the family home. Despite the importance of carer support for improving patient outcomes, our understanding of how carers are impacted by patient initiated violence in psychosis remains limited.

Aims: At first-episode psychosis (FEP), many patients will be routed within familial networks and supported by informal carers who are predominately close family members such as parents. Carer burden, distress and poorer coping styles are associated with different illness beliefs.

Background: Psychotic disorders are severe mental health conditions that adversely affect the quality of life and life expectancy. Schizophrenia, the most common and severe form of psychosis affects 21 million people globally. Informal caregivers (families) are known to play an important role in facilitating patient recovery outcomes, although their own health and well-being could be adversely affected by the illness.

Psychoeducational interventions for family carers of people with psychosis are effective for improving compliance and preventing relapse. Whether carers benefit from these interventions has been little explored. This systematic review investigated the effectiveness of psychoeducation for improving carers' outcomes, and potential treatment moderators. We searched for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) published in English or Chinese in eight databases. Carers' outcomes included wellbeing, quality of life, global morbidities, burden, and expressed emotion.

Despite the internationally recognised importance of informal care, especially in settings with limited services, few studies focus on the informal care for people with mental health problems in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Making informal care visible is important for understanding the challenges and identifying the needs to be addressed. This ethnographic case study explored the dynamics of informal care for people with chronic psychotic symptoms in a group of San living in poor socioeconomic circumstances in a township near Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa.

Background: Reduced life expectancies are recorded in adults with psychotic disorders. Informal carers play key roles in improving illness outcomes for patients, including significantly reducing rates of relapse and hospitalisation. There is, however, a dearth of literature detailing carers' perspectives on physical health problems in the relatives they care for and implications for those in the caregiving role.

Aims In occupational settings, burnout is a common response to chronic exposure stressors and has been frequently documented in formal caregivers (i.e. paid psychiatric staff). However, the literature is limited on reports of burnout among informal caregivers and particularly within early psychosis groups. The current study sought to investigate reports of burnout in carers of young adults treated within a specialist early psychosis service and links with key appraisals reported about the illness and coping.

Objective: Caregivers experience physical and mental stress that ends up lowering their quality of life (QoL). Our goal was to research (a) the level of caregivers QoL; (b) the relationships between the demographic characteristics of the caregivers, their caregiving burden, their family functioning, their social and professional support and their QoL and (c) the best predictors of caregivers QoL.