Parents of Schizophrenia Patients More Likely to Seek Psychiatric Care
Parents of patients with schizophrenia are more likely to seek psychiatric care for themselves than parents of patients with other chronic conditions, according to a study published online in Schizophrenia Bulletin.
The study looked at health care use and other factors among 18,215 parents of patients with schizophrenia and compared them with 11,292 parents of patients with multiple sclerosis, 15,516 parents of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, 34,715 parents of patients with epilepsy, and 18,408 parents whose offspring had no chronic conditions. Participants lived in Sweden, and researchers observed parental patterns from 4 years before their offspring’s diagnosis through 7 years afterward.
Parents of patients with schizophrenia showed a strongly increasing trend of seeking psychiatric care throughout the observation period, the study found. Care focused mostly on anxiety and affective disorders.
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“During the follow-up, these parents had an up to 2.7 times higher risk of specialized psychiatric health care and receipt of social welfare benefits than other parents,” researchers reported.
The more severe their child’s schizophrenia, the higher the incidence of parental psychiatric care, researchers observed.
“Different psychosocial interventions aim[ed] at parents of patients with schizophrenia have been reported to be helpful to reduce stress, which may also play a role in stabilizing mental health of such parents,” a Psychiatric News Alert quoted from the study. “Unfortunately, no data were available for this study regarding the proportion of parents attending such intervention.”
—Jolynn Tumolo
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