Health literacy of Schizophrenic patients’ caregivers in Bangkok Metropolitan

Abstract

The objectives of this quantity research were to develop the Health Literary Scale of Schizophrenic Patients’ Caregivers in Bangkok Metropolitan, and to study the health literacy levels of the caregivers who were looking after the Schizophrenic patients. Nutbeam’s Theory of Health Literacy (2008) was used as theoretical construct to develop the scale. Content validity was primarily validated by five experts and nurses in Mental Health and Psychiatry. One hundred caregivers from each of the six Public Health Service Centers, Department of Health, under the Office of Bangkok Metropolitan Administration were systematically selected as the sample from the list of psychiatric patients in the community, with the total of 600 cases. Two parts of the scale consisted of Demography, and Health literacy scale with multiple choice and Likert’s Rating Scale formats. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was employed by Linear Structural Relationship (LISREL) program, version 8.80, to analyze its validities. Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient and KR- 20 were used to obtain the reliabilities.  Frequencies and Percentage were employed to analyze the health literacy levels of the caregivers. It was found that the total reliability of the Health Literacy Scale was .87. Confirmatory Factor Analysis indicated that the Scale was acceptably consistent with the empirical data (X² = 6.86, df = 5, CFI = 1, GFI = 1, AGFI = .98, RMSEA = .03, SRMR = .01). The factor of Communicative/interactive level of the caregivers was found to be satisfactory, whereas the factors of Basic/functional and Critical levels were a little bit lower. Health literacy of the Schizophrenic patients’ caregivers were found to be at fair level. (31.50 %). Its validity and reliability were acceptable.