Knowledge, beliefs and help-seeking behaviors about schizofrenia of the relatives of patients with schizofrenia

This study as a complement is in order to determine the knowledge, beliefs and help-seeking behaviors about schizophrenia of the relatives of patients with schizophrenia. This study was done at ?Dr. Ekrem Tok Adana Ruh Sağlığı ve Hastalıkları Hastahanesi? (Dr. Ekrem Tok Mental Healt and Diseases Hospital) between February-July 2011. 200 relatives of patients with schizophrenia and the patients who meet schizophrenia criteria DSM-IV-TR set precedents fort his study. The data on it was collected by ?Personal İnformation Form?, ?İnformation Evaluation Form About Diseases?, ?Evaluation Form of Help-Seeking Behaviors?, ?Beliefs Scale About Mental Diseases?. Number and percantage distribution, mean and standart deviation, pearson correlation analysis was used for evaluation of data. 57% of the relatives of patients was woman and their mean age is 39.13 + 12.25. 35.5% of the relatives of patients knew the name of disease as ?schizophrenia?. More than half of the study participants had real information about the symptoms of schizophrenia and 68.5 %of these persons thought that the patients with schizophrenia were aggressive and dangerous. It was respectively found to correct the rate of 56.5%, 46%, 39% and 20% that some problems in the family, some of the chemical changes in the brain, heredity, demons and devils caused schizophrenia disease. 18% of the study participants of thought that the disease was a punishment given by God, 18% of those thought that the disease was infectious and 62.5% of those that the disease would not heal by going to teacher and tomb and 59% of those that the disease would heal and those persons would mingle in society. Most relatives thought that the disease would be treated by medicine (74%) and psychotherapy (64.5%), and (59%) of those stated that would be a side effect of the used medicine, (59%) of those might dependency and (19%) of those might infertility. 43.5% of the relatives of patients firstly brought their patients to the non- psychiatric physicians. The average total point from RHYİÖ was found as 64.17+ 26.18. The relatives of patients showed negative believe over average. The training activities about tha relatives of patients, knowledge and beliefs could lead to a change of attitude about changing your care. As a result of studies the development of mental training programs are proposed.