Coping profiles of family caregivers of people with schizophrenia: differentiations between parent and sibling caregivers

Abstract

Background

Prior research on informal caregivers of people with schizophrenia (PWS) has primarily focused on parental caregivers. However, siblings also play an important role in the recovery process of PWS.

Aims

The aim of this study is to compare the coping profiles of family caregivers according to whether they are siblings or parents of the PWS.

Method

Parent and sibling caregivers (N = 181) completed the Family Coping Questionnaire (FCQ), which assessed their coping strategies.

Results

The results reveal that parents and siblings do not use the same coping strategies and styles. Three coping profiles were identified depending on the caregiver’s relationship with the PWS. Most parents displayed an undifferentiated profile (96.7%), while siblings were more heterogeneously distributed among the undifferentiated profile (58.3%), problem-focused profile (37.5%), and emotion and social support-focused profile (4.2%).

Conclusions

These findings suggest that the coping capacities of family caregivers to deal with the illness of their sibling or child with schizophrenia are diverse and that it is important to differentiate among them. This would enable these caregivers to benefit from support that could be tailored to their specific needs.

Keywords:

• Informal caregivers
• schizophrenia
• coping profiles
• relationship status

Author contributions

LP and SR conceived the study and LP, PG and SR designed it. LP and SR recruited the participants and collected the data. LP, SR, HW and PG analyzed and interpreted the data. LP, HW, and SR wrote the paper. All authors critically reviewed and approved the final version of the paper.

Ethical approval

Protocol 280/2011, by the Ethics Committee for human-based research in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets generated for this study are available from the corresponding author on request.