+44 330 818 7254Jerico Bajador
This study estimated schizophrenia literacy (SL) of caregivers of patients with schizophrenia in NCMH from June-December 2019 – which produced baseline information on caregiver SL in the Philippines. For a period of six months, 202 caregiver- patient pairs in NCMH Admission and Crisis Intervention Section wards who met the eligibility criteria were enrolled. SL was measured by administering the National Center for Mental Health Schizophrenia Literacy-B Questionnaire (NCMHSL- BQ) through structured interview. NCMHSL-BQ is a 52-item questionnaire with seven constructs– all answerable by yes (oo), no (hindi), or I don’t know (hindi ko alam), with an answer key. Out of the 52 items, yes was the correct answer to 33 items (63.5%) while no was the correct answer to the remaining 19 items (36.5%). One (1) point was given for every correct answer, zero (0) for every wrong, and 0.3 for items answered with I do not know. The highest and lowest possible scores were fifty-two (52) and zero (0), respectively. Then, the tertile SL scores were computed which became the cut off points for the exposure groups high, satisfactory, and low SL. Ethics committee approval was obtained from the institution before the study was undertaken. The majority of the caregivers were females, married, reside outside Manila/Metro Manila cities, mother of the patient, belonging to the poor income class, high school graduate, and employed. Their average age was 43±13.2 years old - 19 as the youngest and 73 as the oldest. . The mean SL score was 33 ± 2.9 (95%CI: 32.7-33.5), with 41.3 as highest and 24 as the lowest. Majority of caregivers had low [score: 24 to 31.9] SL (72, 35.6%), followed by those with satisfactory [score: 32 to 34.3] SL (68, 33.7%), and high [score: 34.4 to 41.3] SL (62, 30.7%). Administering the NCMHSL-BQ took 32.97 ± 4.83 minutes (95%CI: 32.29 - 33.64) on average
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