Effect of Hardiness Training on Perceived Stress and Ways of Coping among Family Caregivers of Patients with Schizophrenia

Homecare of a patient with schizophrenia is a major issue taxing upon the family caregivers. Family caregivers are the one who are least attended by the health care professionals since the focus of everyone turns to the patients’ treatment and rehabilitation. The real issue happens over time that many of the caregivers experiences mental health issues  and the patient turns to be the bystander in hospitals and these cycle continues. Here the mental health care centers have to extent their services to consider the ‘whole family’ as a focus of concern in terms of prevention of mental illness, promotion of mental health and rehabilitation. The current study focuses on the effects of hardiness training on Perceived Stress and Ways of Coping of family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. The Participants for this study comprised of 100 family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia randomly selected and randomly assigned to the experimental group (50) and the control group (50). Data were collected by administering Perceived Stress Scale and Ways of Coping Scale. After collection of the baseline data and pretest of the study variables, Hardiness Training was given to the Experimental Group for 20 days. Post-test was conducted after two weeks using the same instruments. The collected data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The result revealed that the mean post-test score of Perceived  Stress   (X2 = 25.72) was significantly lower than the  mean  pre-test  score of  Perceived Stress (X1 =66.04) in the Experimental Group. The participants in the Experimental Group had Positive Ways of Coping as their predominant Ways of Coping, such as accepting responsibility, positive reappraisal, Planful problem solving and seeking social support after hardiness training. The ‘t’ value computed between the mean pre-test scores and the mean post-test scores of Perceived Stress (t =29.513, df-49, p < 0.001)  in Experimental Group were statistically significant at 0.001 level. The independent‘t’ test computed between the post-test scores of Experimental and Control Group on Perceived Stress (t =31.68, df-98, p < 0.001) and Ways of Coping (t =19.74, df-98, p < 0.001) were statistically significant at 0.001 level. The findings of the study suggest that Hardiness Training has effects on Perceived Stress and Ways of Coping of the Experimental Group of family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia and can be considered as an effective therapeutic modality.