Article Sidebar
Published:
Feb 7, 2024Keywords:
Article Details
http://www.sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/pages/view/policies#part_4
Copyright
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose.
AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
Read more here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Main Article Content
Experiences of family members of relatives admitted as state patients in a psychiatric hospital
Seipati Malebye
Nompumelelo Ntshingila
Marie Poggenpoel
Abstract
Background: Family members play an important role in caring for state patients during their admission to a psychiatric hospital. They receive limited support from the multidisciplinary team because they do not have a relationship that will promote the families to verbalise their thoughts, rather the interaction that the multidisciplinary team and family members share is about the admitted state patient.
Aim: This article explored and described the experiences of family members who have a relative admitted as a state patient in a psychiatric hospital. Based on the findings, specific recommendations were provided to facilitate the mental health of state patients’ family members in the future.
Setting: The study was conducted in participants’ homes; only one interview took place in the psychiatric hospital when the family member came to meet the multidisciplinary team.
Methods: The study employed a qualitative, exploratory and contextual research design. Family members’ lived experiences were explored using in-depth phenomenological interviews and later analysed.
Results: The findings indicated family members experienced negative feelings, a sincere desire to support their relatives and a great need to share information and knowledge about mental illness.
Conclusion: The study indicated that state patients’ family members’ mental health should be focused on to improve their understanding of mental illness.
Contribution: The findings of this study call for collaboration between the family members, the police and multidisciplinary teams from the hospitals, the mental health awareness and counselling for families.
