The burden on the family of a psychiatric patient: development of an interview schedule

This paper describes the construction of a semi-structured interview schedule to assess the burden placed on families of psychiatric patients living in the community. The Indian population studied found their sick relatives most burdensome in respect of the effect of the illness on family finances, the disruption of normal family activities and the production of stress symptoms in family members other than the patient. The inter-investigator reliability of the interview schedule proved to be high.