Taken together these results suggest that dierences
in levels of caregiver-burden and awareness
of illness together could account for four of the
®ve strategies that diered between the two
groups, i.e., positive communication, increasing
social involvement, avoidance and resignation.
Thus levels of caregiver-burden and appraisal by
caregivers could account for the more frequent use
of problem-focused strategies by caregivers of
bipolar patients, and emotion-focused strategies
by caregivers of schizophrenic patients, to a large
extent. On the other hand, other factors such as
demographic attributes, duration of illness, or
dysfunction could not wholly account for the
dierences in coping between the two groups. The
fact that caregivers of bipolar patients felt less
burdened and were more aware of the patient's
illness could be attributed to the episodic nature of
BPAD, a clear distinction between well and ill
periods being more likely in this condition, than
schizophrenia (11). However, this would not hold
true for the (often) signi®cant proportion of the
bipolar patients who have a chronic course of
illness or residual symptoms in between episodes
(12±14). In fact, similar to schizophrenia, levels of
caregiver-burden and dysfunction have been
found to be quite high in such prolonged and
persistent aective illnesses (15). How caregivers
cope in such circumstances thus merits further
investigation