Caregiver experience in mental illness: a perspective from a rural community in South Africa

After the democratization of South Africa in 1994, the health-care system was reorganized in accordance with the primary health-care philosophy advocated by the World Health Organization. This was accompanied by a process of deinstitutionalization of mental health-care services, which has led families to become the main providers of care to individuals with mental illness. This study explores the experiences of informal family caregivers of persons with mental illness in a rural area in South Africa. Data were collected through eight individual semistructured interviews of informal caregivers who cared for relatives with mental illness and collect medications monthly at a community clinic in the Makhuduthamaga local municipality in Limpopo, South Africa. A qualitative research design was used, which was explorative, descriptive, and contextual. The data analysis revealed four major themes: (i) experiences of providing for physiological/physical needs; (ii) experiences of providing for emotional needs; (iii) experiences of providing for security needs; and (iv) experiences associated with the medical health-care programme. The study revealed that the experiences of family caregivers were conceptualized negatively, although the interview questions were intentionally neutral. This is believed to be due to the cultural explanatory models of mental illness prevalent in this region of South Africa. It is suggested that to increase compliance with medication, reduce relapse, and mitigate stigma associated mental illness, medical professionals need to incorporate aspects of cultural explanatory models into their explanations of the causes of illness.