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Introduction: The burden of care-giving is defined as the burdensustained by an individual who is giving care to an elderly, chronically ill orincapacitated person; the levels of perception of the burden are known to beaffected by various personal and disease-related characteristics. Studies thatcompare the burden of internal patients’ caregivers with psychiatric patients’caregivers, reported higher caregiving burden for caregivers of psychiatricpatients. In this study, it was aimed to compare the levels of the caregivingburden of those caring for patients with diabetic foot with care-givers ofpsychotic patients. Caregivers of those with inguinal hernia were designated asthe control group to determine the characteristics that are related to thecare-giving burden. Methods: The study was comprised of care-givers of 30hospital in-patients with diabetic foot, 30 in-patients with inguinal hernia,and care givers of 30 patients with a recorded diagnosis of psychotic disorder atÇorum Community Mental Health Centre. The evaluation was made from voluntarycompletion of the Zarit Burden Interview Form and the Beck Depression, BeckAnxiety, Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) and Short Form-36 (SF-36)scales. Results: Thecaregivers of the diabetic foot group were found to be mostly non-workingfemales. No difference was found between the burden levels of psychotic anddiabetic patient groups but the burden level of caregivers of psychoticpatients was determined to be significantly higher than the control group(p lt;0.001). In comparison with those of the control and psychotic group, thedepression and anxiety scales of the diabetic foot group were signficantly highand some points of the quality of life scales were determined to besignificantly low. A correlation between the duration of care-giving and theburden was only determined in the diabetic foot group (r=0.421, p=0.020). Conclusion: Care-givers of diabetic foot patients remained moresocially isolated. This was probably due to having to live with an elderly personrequiring care. For various reasons, care-givers of diabetic foot patients werefound to have high levels of anxiety and depression, low quality of life, andburden levels as high as those of the psychotic group. Therefore, in thecontext of protecting the physical and emotional health of care-givers, carefulmonitoring and when necessary, supportive treatment would be appropriate. |
