[Between responsibility and delimitation: emotional distress of caregivers]

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview regarding the emotional burden of relatives of the mentally ill.

The relevant literature were identified by means of a computerized MEDLINE research on the years 1993 - 2004 and scanning of review articles. A content analysis of interviews with 32 caregivers about their emotional burdens was carried out to complete and elucidate the review.

The emotional burden of caregivers are manifold. Following categories can be distinguished: anxiety and sorrows due to the lack of information about the illness and treatment, unsureness and overcharge with the symptoms of the illness, sorrows about the treatment of the patient, helplessness and palsy, loneliness and responsibility on his own, feelings of being excluded from the treatment of the patient, anxiety about the future, feelings of restrictions of the own autonomy and problems in demarcation, hope and disillusionment, grief and feelings of loss, fear of relapse and suicide, sense of shame and stigmatization, discouragement, feelings of guilt, anger and disappointment, changes in family roles and role-conflictions, problems in the sexuality of the partnership and anxiety about an illness of one's own or heredity to the children of one's own.

The distinct knowledge of caregivers' emotional burdens can help to avoid overcharging the capacity of the carers, to decline high expressed-emotion-levels in the families and to reduce relapse rates of the patients.