Focus groups on lived experiences of families with mentally ill patient about emergent and critical situations of their patients: A qualitative study

Introduction: Family contains persons with common goals and thought who live together. Based on this systematic look to family, every alteration in every member of family system, changes all parts of this system. This study aimed to determine feelings, perceptions and manner of thinking of participants about emergent and critical situations of mentally ill patient. Materials and Methods: Based on that a focus group is a carefully planned discussion to obtain perceptions of a defined interest area, in this study as a small part of data collection for PhD dissertation, focus groups was done with Participants consists 145 immediate family members of mentally ill patient who lived with them to collect qualitative data about emergent and critical situations of mentally ill patient. The data analyzed by considering to Words, Context, Internal consistency, Frequency or extensiveness of comments, Intensity of the comments, Specificity of responses and finally created the big ideas on lived experiences of families with mentally ill patient about emergent and critical situations of their patients. Results: Results showed that families of mentally ill patient believed that anger, break and damage to equipments, aggression, scapegoat, fear and disturbance in family dynamic were lived experiences that occurred. Conclusion: Attention to these results will lead to importance of education and support of mentally ill patients and their family members especially in emergent and critical situations.

lived experiences, family, mentally ill patient, Focus group, emergency, critical situations