Caregivers Illness Conceptualizations In Schizophrenia

Abstract

The Ph.D. study, titled Caregiver Illness Conceptualizations In Schizophrenia: A Study Of Psychological Processes In Context. is a qualitative study, utilising grounded theory newlinemethodology to understand how caregivers who were first and second generation rural migrants,conceptualize the illness condition in their care recipient suffering from schizophrenia and make explicit the psychological process of arriving at these conceptualizations. In addition to newlineunderstanding the illness conceptualization and the process of illness conceptualizations, the study also looked in to the associations these conceptualizations have with emotional reactions of the caregiver. Conceptualised within the framework of constructivism, the study has applications in the areas of clinical psychology, health psychology, and community psychiatry.Recent literature has been indicative of that how caregivers conceptualize their relative s mental newlineillness could be an important predictor of their distress. Few qualitative or quantitative studies have been conducted to explore caregivers construction of illness conceptualization. Few models have been proposed to understand the care recipient s understanding of the illness mostly in newlinephysiological illnesses. These models are being applied on caregivers too, such as the CSM model by Leventhal et.al, Explanatory Model by Arthur Kleinman, the C-SHIP model by Shoda et.al. Each model reveals specific set of contents that dominate the understanding of illness such as beliefs, expectation, constructs etc. Explanatory Model by Arthur Klienman has been used as a newlinebasis for some qualitative studies in India. These studies have focussed primarily on capturing caregiver attribution and beliefs which have been shown to be complex, dynamic and sometimes contradictory...... newline newline newline