Investigation of anxiety, depression and psychological strength of the relatives of patients care for palliative care patients

In this study, it was aimed to investigate the relationship between sociodemographic characteristics of caregivers of patients receiving palliative care treatment and depression, anxiety and psychological resilience in various aspects. The population of this study consists of a total of 116 patient relatives, 73.3% female and 26.7% male, who received inpatient or outpatient palliative care treatment in Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa University Faculty of Medicine Palliative Care Center. In line with the purpose of our study, Beck Anxiety, Beck Depression, Brief Psychological Resilience scales and a sociodemographic data form consisting of 18 questions were applied to the participants. SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) program was used in the statistical analysis of the data. In the evaluation of qualitative data, number (S) and percentage (%) values were calculated. When the data obtained were analyzed with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, it was determined that the data did not show normal distribution, and non-parametric tests (Mann-Whitney U-Kruskal-Wallis H) were preferred in the analysis of the data. According to the results of the analysis, it was determined that 59.5% (mild, moderate, severe) anxiety and 75.9% (mild, moderate, severe) depression were found in the relatives of patients who provided care to patients receiving palliative care. Considering that the resilience scores were close to medium, no positive or negative difference was found for the resilience levels of the relatives of the patients. It was observed that being female, married, being the spouse of the patient, having low education level and income, long care period, having any disease, high dependency of the caregivers predicted the anxiety and depression scores of the relatives of the patients and decreased the psychological resilience scores.