Hi, need to submit a 5000 words essay on the topic The challenges of carers for people with serious mental illness.Download file to see previous pages... Since the role of informal carers is very comp

Hi, need to submit a 5000 words essay on the topic The challenges of carers for people with serious mental illness.

Since the role of informal carers is very complex, rigorous and vital for community as a whole, it is essential that their own needs are satisfied adequately that will in turn help the patients in getting satisfactory services from their respective caretakers. A frustrated carer will never prove to be a good caretaker for a mental patient since he will have his own interests to pursue that might conflict and override with the needs of patients (Bandeira, 2007). The sacrifices made by carers need to be recognized and focus must be emphasized on identifying and addressing their individual needs. For this purpose, ‘respite care’ facilities are made available to carers at their convenience. Respite services refer to facilities of regular periodic intervals allowed to caretakers through formalized policies and arrangements of replacement personnel. Most of the developed nations have respite care integrated into health care systems as a mandatory practice. These are severe problems which ought to be critically researched into. However, the ground reality is that there is a shortfall of such literature resources and past research work that were effectively aimed at these issues and that can be used for evaluation of needs of carers (Grande et al., 2009). This paper provides a comprehensive peer literature review of former researches that have been conducted in this area and evaluates how each of the studies and methodologies succeeded or failed to achieve the planned outcomes. Critical Review of Literature Various literature resources were studied during this research and have been critically evaluated in respect of their overall effectiveness and contributions towards this field of study. The review has been bifurcated in the following major aspects that pertain to challenges faced by carers of mental patients: Objective burden Financial difficulties Flyckt et al., 2013 – These authors studied the connection of objective burdens carried with the informal carers of patients suffering from psychosis. Recruitments of 118 carers and 107 patients were conducted through various Swedish psychiatric facilities. The respondents were provided automated notebooks or paper diaries to mark their number of working hours over a period of four weeks and submit summarized report at the end of each week. On an average 22.5 hours and 14% of total earned income was spent by informal carers of psychotic patients in a week. The majority of expenses incurred were for groceries, accommodation rentals and clothing. Most of them claimed to have lost substantial productivity in their parallel activities at workplace and with family at home due to burdens of their caretaking duties. At the time of reporting at end of the week, the carers were instructed to recall all expenses borne by them during the former period. This was an alternative to the recording method and hence was expected to deliver similar results. However, carers often failed to fully recall their payment histories and when compared to their recorded credentials, there were significant differences. Surprisingly, majority of patients were more troubled by mental problems rather than financial problems. This suggested clearly that subjective burden overshadowed the effects associated with objective burdens and hence this research failed to partially prove its initially set hypothesis.