الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
For many families, the diagnosis of severe mental illness like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is experienced as a trauma and may later cause post-traumatic stress reactions. Moreover, caregivers of severe mental illness are exposed to traumas related to their caregiving role like patients aggression towards themselves or towards them which again makes them more liable to develop posttraumatic stress disorder. Also, caring for a patient with SMI results in stress burden and affect quality of life in almost all domains.
Accordingly we hypothesized that PTSD may be more prevalent in caregivers of patients with SMI.
The present study aim was:
• To determine the magnitude of stress burden and how can quality of life of the caregivers be affected.
• To assess the prevalence of PTSD in caregivers of patients with severe mental illness.
The study sample was divided into case group (caregivers of patients with SMI) and control group (caregivers of patients with chronic physical illness).
Inclusion criteria of case group:
1. Caregivers of patient with severe mental illness
2. Age:18-65 years
3. Sex: both males and females
4. Participants should be well educated to be able to perform self-report scales
5. The participant should be the primary caregiver to the patient(primary caregiver means one person who take care of the patient most of the time)
The definition of severe mental illness is based on the fulfillment of dysfunction (GAF less than 50) and illness duration (2 years) criteria.
So all patients who are under caregiving were subjected to psychometric assessment of their function using global assessment of functioning scale (GAF).
Exclusion criteria of case group:
1. Those who give past history of mental illness prior to the onset of the patient disorder.
2. Those who give history of exposure to events beyond normal human experience (war, torture, rape and natural disasters).
Criteria of control group:
A control group consists of 70 caregivers of patients with chronic physical illness (diabetes and hypertension) fulfilling the inclusion and exclusion criteria of case group.
All caregivers were subjected to the following:-
1) Ethical approval from the institutional ethics committee and written informed consent from all subjects were obtained.
2) Interview to collect demographic data by standard questionnaire.
3) Semi-structured interview to assess the presence of past history of mental illness prior to the beginning of caregiving of patients with severe mental illness.
4) Psychometric assessment of stress burden using Zarit burden interview.
5) Psychometric assessment of quality of life using Arabic version of PCASEE quality of life questionnaire