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1. Introduction
In France, as in other parts of the world, the paradigm of psychiatric care is shifting from a costly care institution (the hospital) to a “low-cost institution” (the family). According to the literature, this transition extends far beyond the field of psychiatry and has become a societal issue (Morin, 2012). Today, not only is the French Government faced with an aging population; it must but also handle the increasing number of chronic diseases that disrupt the public health system and family dynamics. The composition of the French family is also undergoing fundamental changes as sibling sizes fall, divorce cases increase, single, step-parent or blended families expand and more women engage in professional work (Davtian and Scelles, 2013).
Consequently, a crisis has emerged regarding the caregiving role of French carers. While health professionals attend to a patient’s body, the family is entrusted with the unlimited task of free “daily care”, as stipulated in France’s 2011-2015 Psychiatry and Mental Health Plan. While the French family’s composition is undergoing significant changes, it is also faced with increased responsibilities, the latter of which have become harder to handle due to a challenging context and to the pressures faced by the public health and social care systems.
Such a role is not easy to endorse. A French action research, MHGP [1] (Caria et al., 2010) highlighted the overwhelming representation of insanity and “mental illness” [2] in the French general population (this study conducted on 36,000 persons from 47 French public institutions). Moreover, according to a population survey on the attitudes and beliefs of the French public on “mental illness” (Angermeyer et al., 2013), educational programmes are greatly needed to reduce existing misconceptions and to improve mental health care in France.
In this study, we, therefore, chose to focus on the caregiving experiences of French mental health carers. The first objective was to identify the carers’ representations of “mental illness”, their difficulties and their needs when caring for their “mentally-ill” relative. The second objective was to transform our findings into an educational programme that would focus on carer empowerment and on supporting positive relationships within the family.
1.1 Family caregiving in mental health in France and abroad
In 2000, the WHO [3] described the need to consider...
