Abstract:
The purposes of this quasi-experimental research using the pretest -posttest design were to compare: 1) psychological distress in caregivers of persons with schizophrenia before and after received the coping skills enhancement program, and 2) psychological distress in caregivers of persons with schizophrenia who received the coping skills enhancement program and those who received regular nursing care. The research consists of a sample of 40 caregivers of schizophrenic patients who received the service at Outpatient Department at Nakhon Ratchasima Rajanagarindra Psychiatric Hospital, Nakhon Ratchasima province. They were matched-pairs with sex and duration of illness of the patient and then randomly assigned to either an experimental or control group, 20 subjects in each group. The experimental group received the coping skills enhancement program and the control group received regular nursing care. The research instruments used in this research were: 1) the coping skills enhancement program, 2) The Kessler Psychological Distress Scales 3) Coping scale for caregivers of schizophrenics patients. All instruments were tested for content validity by 5 experts. The Cronbachs Alpha Coefficient reliability of this instruments were .89 and .80 respectively. Data was analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test. Major findings were as follows: 1. The psychological distress in caregivers of persons with schizophrenia after received the coping skills enhancement program was statistically significant less than before receiving the program at p .05 level, 2. The psychological distress in caregivers of persons with schizophrenia after received the coping skills enhancement program was significantly less than those in the control group who received the regular nursing care at p. 05 level.