Caring for a Mentally Ill Patient at Home, Mental Health, Religiosity, and Spirituality and Their Association With Family Caregivers' Quality of Life in Lebanon.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, work fatigue, religiosity, and spirituality on quality of life (QOL) among family caregivers of people with mental Illness and those who care for family members without mental illness.Methods: A case-control study was conducted between July and September 2019 that enrolled 600 caregivers using a proportionate sample from all Lebanese governorates. Participants completed a 2-part questionnaire. The first part assessed sociodemographic and other characteristics and the second part comprised various scales including the Quality of Life 12-Item Short Form Health Survey, 9-Item Patient Health Questionnaire, Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 Item, Perceived Stress Scale, Work Fatigue Inventory, Lebanese Insomnia Scale, Mature Religiosity Scale, and Spirituality Index of Well-Being.Results: Higher stress (P < .001), higher depression (P < .001), higher emotional work fatigue (P < .001), married parents compared to single (P = .026), having a child with an intellectual disability (P = .002), and sleep-wake disorders (P = .003) were significantly associated with lower physical QOL, whereas higher spirituality (P < .001) was associated with higher physical QOL. Higher insomnia (P = .01), higher anxiety (P = .017), higher mental work fatigue (P < .001), living with a patient having a mental psychiatric illness (P = .023), caregivers with a chronic disease (P = .040), and taking care of a child with depressive disorders (P = .027) were significantly associated with lower mental QOL, whereas higher spirituality was significantly associated with higher mental QOL.Conclusions: The care of a person with mental illness involves multiple challenges and problems, leading to negative impacts on the familial caregivers' mental health and magnified by the absence of sufficient support and awareness and training programs in Lebanon.Prim Care Companion CNS Disord 2023;25(4)22m03333. Author affiliations are listed at the end of this article.

The specialized competency framework for industry pharmacists (SCF-IP): validation and pilot assessment.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to validate a specialized competency framework for industry pharmacists and assess correlates related to the competency domains in a pilot sample. METHODS: A team of experts assessed the old framework and improved its content validity after a thorough literature review, using the Delphi technique. Domains and their respective competencies and behaviors were re-defined in the framework. Afterward, a web-based cross-sectional study was carried out between March and October 2022, enrolling a convenient sample of ten industry pharmacists who worked in Lebanese pharmaceutical plants. Participants were contacted through the Syndicate of the Pharmaceutical Industries in Lebanon. RESULTS: The specialized competency framework for Lebanese industry pharmacists comprised seven domains. Behavioral items had appropriate loading on their respective factors, which could involve one, two or three competencies. Cronbach alpha values for all domains were close to one, showing appropriate reliability. Each domain was correlated with at least another one, except for domains related to pharmaceutical and industrial development and emergency preparedness, which were not correlated with other domains. The lowest confidence was found in the research and development domain, particularly among participants with only a PharmD. CONCLUSIONS: This study validated the specialized competency framework for Lebanese industry pharmacists. Some domains, specifically those related to industrial development and emergency preparedness, were found to diverge from others. Therefore, it would be recommended to include additional education in the emergency preparedness, research and development fields and to integrate industry-specific skills, courses, and training programs into academic curricula. Furthermore, specialized postgraduate degrees may be necessary to produce practice-ready pharmacists to operate effectively in this vital setting.