Effects of family-centered empowerment intervention on stress, anxiety, and depression among family caregivers of patients with epilepsy

Abstract

Objectives: Family caregivers face numerous challenges in taking care of their family members with epilepsy. The empowerment of this group of people, who can be described as forgotten patients, should always be considered through supportive interventions; therefore, this study investigated the effect of a family-centered intervention program on stress, anxiety, and depression among family caregivers of patients with epilepsy.

Methods: In 2017, a trial was conducted in Iran among subjects selected by the convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to two groups: intervention and control. After five sessions per week over a four-week period, the intervention- and control-group data were collected using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) in three stages: before, immediately after, and two months after the intervention. Data were analyzed with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software using descriptive and analytical statistics, an independent t-test, and repeated measures Analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Results: In this study, the family caregivers included 61.3% women and 38.7% men, with a mean age of 37.5 years. The findings showed no significant differences in the mean scores of stress (p = 0.93), anxiety (p = 0.91), and depression (p = 0.56) before the interventional program between the intervention and control groups, but these differences were statistically significant in the mean score of stress (p = 0.003) in the immediately after the interventional program, whereas the mean scores of depression were not decreased significantly (p = 0.3). Two months after the interventional program the mean scores of stress (p = 0.001) and anxiety (p = 0.001) were significantly decreased in the intervention group, but the mean score of depression was not decreased significantly (p = 0.09).

Conclusion: The results suggested that a family-centered intervention program reduced the stress, anxiety, and depression of caregivers because of feasibility, simplicity, and utility of intervention. This program was focused on psychological issues of caregivers, and an emphasis on their empowerment helped them in managing their problems in the caregiving situation and achieved greater psychological potency in the caring process.

Keywords: Anxiety; Depression; Epilepsy; Family caregivers; Iran; Stress.