Caregiver's Psychosocial Concerns and Psychological Distress in Emergency and Trauma Care Setting

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) will be the third largest killer by the year 2020 in the world. It creates the great amount of morbidity, disability, mortality, and reduces the psychosocial well-being of the patients and their caregivers. Hence, the current paper aimed to explore the psychosocial distress and caregivers' concerns in emergency and trauma care (ETC) setting.

This study adopted qualitative research design. All caregivers of TBI survivors were considered as a universe of the study. A total of 50 caregivers were recruited, and the predesigned questionnaire was administered. Depression, anxiety, stress scale was used to identify the caregivers' depression, stress, and anxiety. The simple thematic analysis was used to derive the themes from the verbatim data. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 21.0 (SPSS South Asia Pvt. Ltd, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India).

In the quantitative analysis, caregivers' mean age was found to be 45 (mean = 45.00 ± 13.83) years. Caregivers had experienced mild depression (13.36 ± 3.07), moderate anxiety (13.70 ± 3.03), and minimum stress (13.66 ± 2.98) levels. Qualitative results identified the following themes: difficulty in accessing timely care, uncertainty about the prognosis and future, family concerns and financial constraints, personal feelings and personal needs, and supportive care. Chi-square test revealed that there was no significant association between gender and depression (χ² = 2.381 P < 0.12), anxiety (χ² = 0.01 P < 0.92), and stress (χ² = 0.235 P < 0.61) levels of caregivers.

To accomplish, providing psychosocial care in ETC setting, the role of psychiatric social workers is pivotal.