Educational Needs of Families of Patients with Schizophrenia: A Literature Review

Introduction: Families of patients with schizophrenia face serious challengesdue to clinical heterogeneity and multiplicity of symptoms and theirmanagement. Investigating educational needs of families can improve thequality of life for both patients and families. In this study, special educationalneeds of these families were investigated through a systematic review ofprevious studies.Methods: This systematic review was conducted in Persian data bases such asIranmedex, Iran doc, SID and English data bases of Cochran, PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Medline. Also, the used English keywords were educational needs,family, schizophrenia and their equivalents in Persian language. A total of15740 articles were found. Finally by considering the inclusion criteria, 16articles were selected and evaluated to answer the study’s questions.Results: The analysis of the data extracted from the 16 selected papers for theresearch question implies that the needs of families of patients withschizophrenia include six dimensions: social interactions, support resources,access to the unknown items in the disease, coping and stress management,stigma and improving the quality of life.Conclusion: The results suggest that proper understanding of the problems infamilies of patients with schizophrenia not only helps the families of patients,but also teaches the professionals involved with them to change their attitudetowards educational planning. Furthermore, any planning without consideringthe role of family is doomed to fail.

Keywords:

Educational Needs , Family , Schizophrenia