[Burden of siblings of inpatients with schizophrenia]

Previous studies dealing with effects of psychiatric illness on patients' families mostly focussed on concerns of the parents. The siblings' role as a caregiver, however, has been mostly disregarded or forgotten about.

37 narrative interviews with siblings of schizophrenia patients were analysed using a summarizing content analysis. The global statements and categories were quantitatively analysed to assess their relative importance.

Analysis of the 492 individual statements of the siblings revealed 26 global types of statements which were assigned to five categories: 1. "Burden arising in the daily contact with the sibling" (36.2 %), 2. "Burden with respect to the healthy sibling's privacy" (26.8 %), 3. "Burden with respect to the contact with the family" (15.7 %), 4. "Burden with respect to the contact with institutions and professionals" (14.2 %), 5. "Burden with respect to the siblings' own social contacts (friends/public)" (7.1 %). The three types of burden most reported by the healthy siblings are: "Handling the symptoms of illness" (100 %), "Emotional burden due to the illness of the sibling" (100 %) and "Uncertainty in judging what amount of stress the schizophrenia patient can cope with" (81.1 %).

Siblings of schizophrenia patients are burdened in many aspects. More attention should be given to their outpatient and inpatient medical treatment.