Abstract:
The purpose of this quasi-experimental research were to compare: 1) dependent care agency of schizophrenic patients caregivers before and after they received the supportiveeducative group intervention and 2) to compare dependent care agency of schizophrenic patients caregivers who received the supportive-educative group intervention and those who received regular nursing care. The sample consisted of 40 primary caregivers of schizophrenic patients, who met the inclusion criteria by age and length of caregiving experience, were matched pair and were randomly assigned to experimental group or control group, 20 subjects in each group. The experimental group received supportiveeducative group intervention, whereas the control group received regular nursing care. The research instruments consisted of : 1) Supportiveeducative group intervention 2) Socio-Demographic 3) Caregivers capabilities in caregivers schizophrenic patients 4) Knowledge in caring 5) Caregiver and schizophrenic patients relationships. All instruments were tested for content validity by 5 professional experts. The reliability of the 3rd, 4th and 5th instruments were reported by Cronbachs Alpha Coefficient of 0.88, 0.85 and 0.89 respectively. Data were analyzed using t-test. Major findings were as follows: 1. Dependent care agency among schizophrenic patients caregivers after received supportiveeducative group intervention were significantly higher than that before at p .05 levels. 2. Dependent care agency among schizophrenic patients caregivers who received supportiveeducative group intervention were significantly higher than those who received regular nursing care, at p .05 levels.