The influence of a mental health home visit service partnership intervention on the caregivers' home visit service satisfaction and care burden

Abstract

Aims and objectives: To investigate a community-based and hospital-based home visit partnership intervention in improving caregivers' satisfaction with home service and reducing caregiver burden.

Background: The community-oriented mental healthcare model prevails internationally. After patients return to the community, family caregivers are the patients' main support system and they also take the most of the burden of caring for patients. It is important to assist these caregivers by building good community healthcare models.

Design: A longitudinal quasi-experimental quantitative design.

Methods: The experimental group (n = 109) involved "partnership" intervention, and the control group (n = 101) maintained routine home visits. The results were measured before the intervention, 6 and 12 months after the partnership intervention.

Results: Six months after the partnership intervention, the satisfaction of the experimental group was higher than the control group for several aspects of care. Although the care burden was reduced in the experimental group, there was no significant difference between the two groups.

Conclusions: This study confirms that the partnership intervention can significantly improve caregiver satisfaction with home services, without reducing the care burden.

Relevance to clinical practice: The community-based and hospital-based mental health home visit service partnership programme could improve the main caregiver's satisfaction with the mental health home visit services, while the reduction in care burden may need government policies for the provision of more individual and comprehensive assistance.

Keywords: caregivers’ burden; home visit service; mental illness; partnership intervention.