Title

Mental health status and lived experiences among serious mental illness caregivers in India

Authors

Srikalyani Murugan¹, Shankar Shanmugam Rajendran²,*, Anbalagan Maruthan³, Srividhya Balasubramanian⁴, Baskaran Vasantha Dhanapal⁴, Lakshmi Panchamoorthy⁴ & Sylvia Samuel Jebaraj⁴

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 Child Health Nursing, College of Nursing, Madras Medical College, The TN Dr MGR Medical University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India; *Corresponding author

Email

Srikalyani Murugan - E-mail: sri.kalyani2727@gmail.com
Shankar Shanmugam Rajendran - E-mail: shankarshaki@yahoo.com
Anbalagan Maruthan - E-mail: anbalagan.avi@gmail.com
Srividhya Balasubramanian - E-mail: srusur@yahoo.com
Baskaran Vasantha Dhanapal - E-mail: basghee@gmail.com
Lakshmi Panchamoorthy - E-mail: aadhivarshini@gmail.com
Sylvia Samuvel Jebaraj - E-mail: sylviadaniel1987@gmail.com

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received September 1, 2026; Revised September 30, 2026; Accepted September 30, 2026, Published September 30, 2026

Abstract

Caregivers of individuals with severe mental illness experience substantial psychological challenges, yet their mental health and lived experiences remain insufficiently understood. Therefore, it is of interest to assess the mental health of 100 caregivers using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale and explored the lived experiences of six caregivers through phenomenological interviews. Overall, 67% of caregivers had moderate mental health, 24% had high mental health and 9% had low mental health, with significant associations observed for age, gender, caregiving duration and illness duration. Qualitative analysis identified four themes: daily caregiving realities, emotional strain, reduced social and family support and altered personal and family dynamics. Thus, data shows that mental health outcomes with caregivers’ lived experiences provide comprehensive evidence to support family centered mental health services for severe mental illness.

Keywords

Caregivers, serious mental illness, mental health status, lived experiences, mixed methods

Citation

Murugan et al. Bioinformation 22(9): 5841-5844 (2026)

Edited by

Ritik Kashwani

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

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.