Check out this new research - Participation Opportunity

Family
1

Caregivers,

This post is a request for your participation with a research project I am conducting under the supervision of Dr. Brandon Youker, a professor in the School of Social Work at Grand Valley State University. The title of my research project is The Experiences of Caregiving for a Parent Diagnosed with Schizophrenia. This project explores adults who are caregiving for their parents with schizophrenia. Knowledge and information generated from this study may help others understand what caregiving is like.

I hope that you might help me connect with caregivers (or yourself) so I can hear their stories, experiences, and perspectives. Interviews may be conducted in person if you live in the Greater Grand Rapids area or over Skype if you live elsewhere in the United States.

Below is further detail regarding the eligibility of research participants as well as an abstract.

What qualifies someone to be involved in this study?

· Caregivers who are adult children for their parent.

· The care recipient has been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

· The caregiver is the primary caregiver to his/her parent.

· The caregiver has been caregiver for at least 6 months.

· The caregiver is willing to share his/her experiences and thoughts.

Who are adult children for this study?

· Adult children are those 18 years of age or older

· Children can be biological, step-children, or adoptees who were raised in the same home as the care recipient.

For questions about the study please contact:

Silver Kendrick

Phone: (616) 422-3190

Email: gvsucaregiver@gmail.com

Partial Abstract

This project seeks to answer the question: What are the experiences of being the primary caregiver to a parent diagnosed with schizophrenia? Thus, the purpose of this project is to learn about the experiences and perspectives of being a caregiver to a parent diagnosed with schizophrenia by obtaining detailed descriptions of these experiences and depth of emotional disclosure. More specifically, the topics and questions will focus on the impact that caregiving has had on the caregiver’s physical, social-relational, mental-emotional, spiritual, and economic/financial experiences. Data will be collected using six to eight semi-structured face-to-face interviews at an agreed upon private location or over skype.

2

You can imagine that we have the same kind of experiences that any caregiver would have except:
The ones we try to help do not want our help and do not even sometimes realize that they need help.
What are the results going to be from this project?

3

According to my review of previous literature, the results of caring for a person with Schizophrenia are much more severe. There is alot of previously written literature on caregiving, family caregiving and family caregiving for a person with schizophrenia. There is a huge gap in the literature on adult children caring for a parent with schizophrenia. The purpose of the study is to fill this gap. There is also a lot of previously written literature that shows that the effects of caregiving are different for different family members (spouse, sibling, parent, child etc). This is why it is important to gain the perspective and experiences of the adult child. Ofcourse the experiences may be somewhat similar to other caregivers but mental health caregivers have different effects from caregiving. It is important not the generalize that everyone who is a schizophrenia caregiver has trouble with the care recipient not wanting help. That may indeed be your experience but it isnt the experience of everyone. I cannot tell you what the results would be because i have yet to conduct the study but my goal is to highlight the positive, negative and neutral aspects of caregiving for a parent diagnosed with schizophrenia. If you have any other questions or know someone who is interested (or yourself) do not hesitate to contact me.

4

There is no helping those who are in denial, my daughter needs meds desperately but according to her, she is fine. I live in fear for her wellbeing.

5

Pardon me if I irritate my scalp, but it’s difficult for me to grasp why one is attempting to quantify just now what has been widely understood since Theo Lidz, Jules Henry, R. D. Laing, Don Jackson, Greg Bateson and Aaron Esterson were in kneepants.

Are we trying to support some sort of statistical epidemiology for PTSD among the caregivers of sz pts? I’m not dissing the objective of enlightening the masses (or the profession), but if you’ll pardon my perplexity, it seems that it’s no longer news.

If there’s a useful project out there (at least from my perspective), it would be to invest the money back of this project in printing more copies of the book at the link below and setting up book study groups for sz pt caregivers around tx facilities.

6

To those who actually care about the world understanding these specific experiences I want to inform you that there has been changes to the study. Below you can review the requirements.

July 9, 2015

This letter is a request for your assistance with a research project I am conducting under the supervision of Dr. Brandon Youker School of Social Work at Grand Valley State University. The title of my research project is “The Experiences of Caregiving for a Parent Diagnosed with a Severe and Persistent Mental Illness”. I would like to provide you with more information about this project that explores adult-children who are caregiving for their parents with severe and persistent mental illness. Knowledge and information generated from this study may help others understand what it is like caregiving for a parent with such an illness.

I hope that you might help me connect with caregivers (or yourself) and invite them to be interviewed so we can gather their stories, experiences, and perspectives of caregiving.

What qualifies someone to be involved in this study?
• Adult children who are caregivers for their parent.

• The care recipient has been diagnosed and is under psychiatric care for a severe and persistent mental illness which includes Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective disorder, Delusional disorder, other psychotic disorders, and Bipolar disorder.

• The care recipient was first diagnosed with a severe and persistent mental illness at least 10 years ago.

• The caregiver is the primary caregiver to his/her parent.

• The caregiver has been caregiver for a year or more

• The caregiver is willing to share his/her experiences.

• The caregiver is willing to participate in a 1 hour or 2 hour interview.
Who are adult children for this study?
• Adult children are those 18 years of age or older

• Children can be biological, step-children, or adoptees who were raised in the same home as the care recipient.

For questions about the study or eligibility please contact:
Silver Kendrick
Phone: (616) 422-3190
Email: gvsucaregiver@gmail.com
Abstract

This project seeks to answer the question: what are the experiences of being the primary caregiver to a parent severe and persistent mental illness? Thus, the purpose of this project is to learn about the experiences and perspectives of being a caregiver to a parent diagnosed with a severe and persistent mental illness by obtaining detailed descriptions of these experiences and depth of emotional disclosure. More specifically, the topics and questions will focus on the impact that caregiving has had on the caregiver’s physical, social-relational, mental-emotional, spiritual, and economic/financial experiences. Data will be collected using semi-structured face-to-face interviews at an agreed upon private location.

Note on Interviewee Recruitment

The research participants will be actively recruited from July through September 2015. The recruitment materials will contain information about the study, the benefits and risks of participating, eligibility criteria, and our contact information.

This project has been approved by Grand Valley State University’s Human Research Review Committee, approval number 15-145H

7

Hi,

Will you share the results of the research with the participants (i.e. the research paper) and also with us here?

8

How large is the targeted study population? What kind of playing field levelers (meaning taxonomic definitions) are you going to use? Are they already in place, or is the study set up to define them on the basis of the interviews? Just wondered. Sounds like a useful project with a lot of high-impact publication potential.