Family responses to a child with schizophrenia: An Indonesian experience

• The study showed: parent of children with schizophrenia showed a chaotically disengaged relationship.
• Healthy parental relationship was more adherence in giving the medication.
• Having a child with schizophrenia was major stressor to Indonesian family.

Indonesian culture puts a high value on family bonding. Therefore, support and encouragement for each family member is high that any problems are the responsibility of the whole family. This paper explores the implications of the phenomena whether is a schizophrenic child in the family affected the parental relationship in Indonesian family and trying to find out the implication of parental relationship on medication adherence. This was a cross-sectional study which involved 180 parents of children with schizophrenia and parents with aged matched non-schizophrenic children as a control group; consisting of 45 parents of children with schizophrenia and 135 parents of non-schizophrenic children. The parental relationship was examined by using the Indonesian version of Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale IV (Indonesian version of FACES IV). Our study revealed that 75.6% parents of children with schizophrenia experienced a healthy parental relationship compared to 94.80% in the parents of non-schizophrenic children group. The most prevalent of unhealthy relationship among parents of children with schizophrenia was chaotic disengagement. Parental adherence to give medication for their child with schizophrenia was better if they had a healthy parental relationship. In conclusion, a small number of Indonesian parents with schizophrenic children experienced an unhealthy parental relationship. Therefore, psycho-education and supportive psychotherapy still needed to facilitate those families to express their emotion adapt and cope.