Title
Resilience among family caregivers managing schizophrenia
Authors
Baskaran Vasantha Dhanapal1, Shankar Shanmugam Rajendran2,*, Gomathy Priya Venkatachalam3, Jayalakshmi Lakshmanan1, Srikalyani Murugan1, Lakshmi Panchamoorthy1 & Sylvia Samuel Jebaraj1
Affiliation
1Department of Psychiatric Nursing, College of Nursing, Madras Medical College, The TN Dr MGR Medical University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India; 2Department of Nursing Research, College of Nursing, Madras Medical College, The TN Dr MGR Medical University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India; 3Department of Community Health Nursing, College of Nursing, Madras Medical College, The TN Dr MGR Medical University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India; *Corresponding author
Baskaran Vasantha Dhanapal - E-mail:
basghee@gmail.com
Shankar Shanmugam Rajendran - E-mail: shankarshaki@yahoo.com
Gomathy Priya Venkatachalam - E-mail: kgksavan@gmail.com
Jayalakshmi Lakshmanan - E-mail: gopikabrij2820@gmail.com
Srikalyani Murugan - E-mail: sri.kalyani2727@gmail.com
Lakshmi Panchamoorthy - E-mail: aadhivarshini@gmail.com
Sylvia Samuel Jebaraj - E-mail: sylviadaniel1987@gmail.com
Article Type
Research Article
Date
Received August 1, 2026; Revised August 31, 2026; Accepted August 31, 2026, Published August 31, 2026
Abstract
Schizophrenia places substantial psychological, social and economic demands on family caregivers, yet their resilience remains inadequately understood. Therefore, it is of interest to assess the resilience among 60 family caregivers and explore the lived experiences of six caregivers through phenomenological interviews. Overall, 78.56% of caregivers had high resilience, while resilience was significantly associated with age (p = 0.001), gender (p = 0.05), education (p = 0.001) and later illness onset (p = 0.01). Qualitative analysis identified five themes: caregiving burden, emotional distress, financial hardship, social stigma and hope-driven resilience. Thus, data shows that combining resilience assessment with caregiver experiences can inform culturally appropriate, family-centered schizophrenia care.
Keywords
Schizophrenia, family resilience, caregiver experience, mixed methods, phenomenology, psychiatric nursing, South India
Citation
Dhanapal et al. Bioinformation 22(8): 5149-5153 (2026)
Edited by
Ritik Kashwani
ISSN
0973-2063
Publisher
License
This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
