Family caregivers of people with bipolar disorder experience a range of difficulties in understanding and coping with the impact of the disorder. The Family Support Team at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, Queensland, developed an educational supportive program for families of people with bipolar disorder that sought to improve caregiver knowledge of the illness, reduce caregiver distress, and enhance caregiver coping. The program also sought to moderate caregiver attributions of patient behavior in order to build an illness perspective of behavior. The bipolar program was developed, trialed, and evaluated. Analysis of results shows encouraging improvements for some families in knowledge, distress, attributions, and ways of coping. Practice and research implications include identifying differences with the schizophrenia program, the importance of a problem-solving focus, maintaining a balance between information giving and support, and timing of the intervention.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Social work
Research Field:	Clinical social work practice
Objective Division:	Law, Politics and Community Services
Objective Group:	Community services
Objective Field:	Carers' support
UTAS Author:	Bland, R (Professor Robert Bland)
ID Code:	18872
Year Published:	2000
Web of Science® Times Cited:	8
Deposited By:	Sociology and Social Work
Deposited On:	2000-08-01
Last Modified:	2001-05-09
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