Revista Internacional de Saúde Mental e Psiquiatria

Effect of Psychoeducation on Quality of Life of Catha Edulis User Schizophrenia Patients

Abraha Gosh Woldemariam, Gloria Thupayagale-Tshweneagae

Although the provision of psychoeducational intervention as a psychological treatment for people with schizophrenia showed a promising result, it is poorly implemented in Ethiopia due to lack of robust information.

This study was aimed at testing the effect of psychoeducational intervention on quality of life of people with schizophrenia that use catha edulis.

Quasi-experimental study design was used to test the effect of psychoeducation on quality of life.

Respondents were recruited using purposive sampling method. Psychoeducation was provided for 13 catha edulis (khat) user schizophrenia patients and then their quality of life was compared with other 14 catha edulis user schizophrenia patients. Collected data were entered in to computer software SPSS package version 23. Mean difference in quality of life of normally distributed continuous variables within and between groups were analyzed using paired and independent samples ttest respectively; for none normally distributed continuous variables, mann-whitney U test and wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to test mean differences in quality of life between groups and within groups respectively.

Except for physical functioning (p=0.142) and body pain (p=0.406) respondents in intervention group had demonstrated significant improvement in scores of quality of life on physical (p=0.001) and mental (p=0.002) component summaries; and on role physical (p=0.012), general health (p=0.021), vitality (p=0.005), social functioning (p=0.020), role emotion (p=0.014), and mental health (p=0.004) domains than respondents in control group.

Psychoeducational intervention showed a promising result on improving the quality of life of schizophrenia patients that use catha edulis.