RESUMO
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to describe the content of interventions provided by mental health professionals working for local government in Japan to families of people with schizophrenia in need of treatment. METHODS: The study was designed to be qualitative and descriptive. The subjects were ten local prefectural or municipal government professionals in the Kanto region who worked as psychiatric social workers or public health nurses and who had five or more years of experience in their professions. In semi-structured interviews, subjects were asked to choose one case from their experience of assisting both persons with schizophrenia and their families who contacted them for consultation, in which they believed that they were able to successfully assist the family in bringing the untreated person with schizophrenia or person who had discontinued treatment to hospital. Interview questions focused on the professionals' assistance to the families. The interview data were transcribed, coded by type of assistance rendered, and categorized by commonalities for comparison. RESULTS: Six major categories and nineteen subcategories were extracted through the data analysis process, which focused on support for the families of people with schizophrenia that helped the latter engage in treatment. The six major categories were "Make a tentative intervention plan", "Establish relationship with family", "Wait for the family members to make their decision to hospitalize the person", "Stand by the family members and support their decision to persuade the person to receive treatment" "Make pre-hospitalization arrangements" and "Provide continual support for families and the patient after hospitalization". CONCLUSION: The most important forms of support for families were assistance in persuading the person with schizophrenia to receive treatment and in making their own decision to bring the person to inpatient treatment. This support can lead to better patient-family relationships in the future and to better prognoses. The results of this study will contribute to improving the quality of professional support for families who are trying to make decisions regarding treatment of their relatives with schizophrenia.