Brief Chinese version of the Family Experience Interview Schedule to assess caregiver burden of family members of individuals with mental disorders.

Background: Caregiver burden is an important issue that needs to be addressed when developing management programs for persons with chronic mental illnesses, but there is, as yet, no reliable way for assessing this in China.

Aim: Assess the validity and reliability of a brief adapted Chinese version of the Family Experience Interview Schedule (FEIS) among caregivers of inpatients with mental disorders in China.

Methods: We first translated and back-translated the original 114-item FEIS and administered it to 606 primary caregivers of psychiatric inpatients. After excluding 9 items about sociodemographic variables and 9 items that over 15% of respondents were unable to answer, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis using a random half of the sample on the remaining 96 items and, based on the results of the factor analysis, selected the items to be included in the final shortened scale. Correlation analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and internal consistency measures were used to assess the reliability and validity of the final scale using data from the second half of the sample.

Results: The final scale included 28 items that loaded on five dimensions: (a) patients' violent behavior; (b) patients' suicidal tendency; (c) caregivers' depression and anxiety; (d) disruption of caregivers' daily routines; and (e) caregivers' satisfaction with health services. These five dimensions explained 50.5% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis found reasonable fit of this 5-factor model (χ (2) /df=2.94, p<0.001, goodness-of-fit index [GFI]=0.85, comparative fit index [CFI]=0.85, root-mean-square error of approximation [RMSEA]=0.08). The correlation coefficients between each item and the corresponding factor were all above 0.5. The Cronbach α coefficient of the entire scale was 0.76 and that for the five dimensions varied between 0.71 and 0.84.

Conclusion: The five dimensions of family burden assessed by the 28-item brief Chinese version of FEIS have good internal consistency and, thus, appear to assess valid dimensions of family burden in Chinese caregivers of persons with serious mental illnesses. Further work is needed to assess the test-retest reliability of this scale and its sensitivity to change over time.