Psychoeducational intervention for people with Parkinson's disease and family/carers: Preliminary results at baseline time

Introduction Psychosocial adjustment affects the quality of life of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and his/her family/carers. However, this is not usually addressed in clinical practice. Objective To evaluate coping skills, psychosocial adjustment and quality of life of patients with PD and their family/carers from a quasiexperiment at baseline time. Method Quasi-experimental study carried out in Primary Care centres to evaluate the impact of a psychoeducational intervention in contrast with an informative intervention. The sample comprised 80 patients with PD and 80 family carers, divided into a control group and an experimental group. The psychosocial adjustment scale PAIS-SR, the coping scale Brief COPE and the quality of life scales PDQ-39 and SQLC were used in the data collection. The analysis of sociodemographic data and Student's t tests was performed using SPSS 23.0. Results The patients and family/carers from the control group and the experimental group noticed a mild impairment in their quality of life and some difficulties in their psychosocial adjustment to illness. Both groups used coping skills with a medium-low frequency. Acceptance was the most used coping skill by patients and family/carers. No statistically significant differences were found between the control group and the experimental group. Conclusions We observed that the quality of life and psychosocial adjustment to their illness was impacted in patients with PD and their family/carers, which could be addressed with psychoeducational interventions focused on developing their coping skills.