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전윤희 ( Jeon Yun-Hee ) - 광주보건대학교
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Abstract
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This paper presents a field study that examined family members´ experiences of caring for a relative with chronic mental illness, primarily based on the family caregivers´ personal accounts of their caring practices. Since the deinstitutionalization movement of the late 1960s and the 1970s gained momentum there has been increasing emphasis on community based care for people with mental illness, which has resulted in a significant in-crease in family responsibilities in caring for disabled family members. In this regard, respite care services have played an important role in reducing caregiver burnout and maintaining caregivers´ physical and emotional health. Despite this, there has been a paucity of research on family carers of people with chronic mental illness and their perceptions of respite care. The purpose of this descriptive, interpretive study was to depict the lived world of caring within the individual family context and within the more extensive system of health care and community support services.
The design of the study was guided by the work of Van Manen(1990) and utilized hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry to explore takenforgranted experiences of caring in the context of the persons´ everyday lives, which helped the researcher acquire indepth understanding of these experiences and describe the phenomenon of family caregiving in the context of chronic mental illness. To uncover the meaning of caregiving to these family members with regard to their ongoing committment to caring for their mentally ill relative, the study focused on the experience of caregiving from the perspective of fourteen family caregivers, in particular mothers, fathers and a daughter, and
their views on respite care. Through two occasions of semistructured, indepth interviews, the participants were asked to describe what it is like to be a family caregiver of a person with chronic mental illness. Transcribed interviews were analysed by thematically describing and interpreting the meanings of the lived experience.
Two principal themes were extracted which describe the experience of caregiving in the light of phenomenological notions of lived time temporality and family caring: taking
each day as it comes, and lived Otherrelationality and family caring: looking at the world through the other´s window. Taking each day as it comes connoted lived time that
the caregivers experienced from the beginning of their involvement in caring for their mentally ill relative, characterized by floundering in the dark, taking each day as it comes, learning by experience, ongoing grieving, and selfpreserving through time out. On the other hand, looking at the world through the other´s window showed how the study participants perceived and interpreted their experience of being in the world in a particular way, and that was through the eyes of the one they cared for. This was explicated through sub themes of being torn, through the eyes of the other, living in fear of, being swept under the carpet, battling to get help and feeling the difference. The main contribution of the present study is its explication of the family caregivers´ experiences and needs in a way which can in-crease nurses´ and other health professionals´ appreciation of the complex, ongoing, and demanding nature of family caregiving. The study identified the caregivers´ needs for understanding, support and respite, and these provided directions for nursing practice. social policy, and future research.
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KeyWords
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원문 및 링크아웃 정보
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등재저널 정보
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