It is becoming obvious from what it has been described on the previous sections and on the basis of the findings of this study that the family burden in Cyprus will increase dramatically if the current state of the mental health system and the overall welfare state will not adopt to the pressures of the economic crisis. As Kleinman [45], 2009 claims the global mental health is a reflection of failure of humanity. He rightly pointed out that families of the individuals with mental illnesses are not only sharing the suffering from the illnesses but are actually key caregivers for the affected individuals. As professional services for helping the families are inadequate [37], families simply fail to offer the desired care by themselves.
Consequently, families under great stress due to the reasons described throughout this paper would give up and reject the mentally ill individuals who would become socially out-casted. The mentally ill individuals would rarely participate in daily social activities such as festivals, marriage, celebrations, or even family shopping. Such a nonperson life ends with the mentally ill individuals becoming further stigmatized. Therefore, mental health systems and consequently professionals need to develop more innovative programs for families. Instead of only supporting the families and easing their burdens through monetary provisions, it could be more effective to involve the families as active members of the health care team by assigning specific tasks for the families and allocating the necessary resources for performing such tasks. As Igberase et al., [46], 2010 have clearly shown that caregivers of patients with schizophrenia experience immense burden. They also suggest that Public health education as well as targeted interventions in the area of employment, financial and other support for persons with mental disorders would help to ameliorate this burden. According to our study findings and to what Igberase et al., (2010) suggest, health systems need to aim to the development of psychosocial provisions for both family caregivers and patients as to decrease the family burden rates and increase the possibility of smooth transition to the society.