Mental health nurses constitute one of the core pro- fessional groups involved in the treatment and support of older psychiatric patients and their caregivers. They meet the caregivers of patients with severe mental illness in their everyday work. Nursing interventions to address the essential needs of caregivers can however, be consid- ered to be still in their infancy [15, 16]. These include information about the illness and treatment; training in skills to cope with the illness and its implications for the family; and support for themselves. For the devel- opment of a nursing intervention that matches the complex nature of both patient and caregiver needs, it is important to identify and refer to existing nursing practices [17, 18].
We decided, therefore, to conduct a qualitative study with the aim of gaining insight into the current practice of mental health care nurses’ support to caregivers of older adults with severe mental illness. We studied re- ported caregiver support practices in two large mental health care organizations in the Netherlands. This study was embedded in a larger research project focusing on the development and evaluation of a theory–based nurs- ing intervention to support caregivers of older adults with severe mental illness.