Lived Experiences of caregivers with patients borderline personality disorder: A Phenomenological study

Abstract

Background: patients with borderline personality disorder(BPD) in the family are a complicated and stressful experience. The caregivers'experiences of problems they have in care of patient with BPD have remained unknown. The aim of this research was to explore experiences of caregivers while living with BPD patients in iran.<br /> Methods: This interpretive phenomenological research was performed on 10 caregivers of patients with BPD at Ibn-sina Hospital in Mashhad, Iran in 2019. Purposeful sampling were used for sampling. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and saturated after 16 interviews. The analysis of data was concurrently carried out using method proposed by Diekelman (1989). The MAXQDA software (Ver.10) was used for data organization. Results: The participants in this study were aged 25 to 55 years. after data analysis, three themes (“life in hell", “chain to the feet", and “black shadow of stigma") and six sub-themes (“disrupted from the life", “self-discrepancy", “care bottlenecks", “in the fence of restriction", “society dagger" and “resort to secrecy") emerged. <br /> Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the caregivers of patients with BPD during period of care were faced with variety of problems. It is suggested that health policy makers pay more attention to these problems related to the mental health of caregivers.