Abegaz, Fentaw (PhD)Belina, Merga2022-04-072023-11-092022-04-072023-11-092008-07http://10.90.10.223:4000/handle/123456789/31209The aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence and nature of the objective burden experienced by caregivers of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder patients. Also to compare the results from the two statistical methods, polytomous logi stic regression and discriminant analysis in correctly classifying and selecting important explanatory variables of burden on caregivers in psychiatric patients. A total of 514 patients were included in this study. Burden on the caregivers was assessed in telms of how much the caregiver's life was affected by the presence of the illness in the family. Results indicate that 36.5% of the caregivers experienced no burden, whereas 36.9% of them experienced moderate burden. The polytomous ordinal logistic regression classified 67.2% of the caregivers in their respective burden group, whereas the discriminant analysis classified 64.7% of the caregivers correctly. The polytomous ordinal logistic regression shows a slight improvement in correctly classifying caregivers over multiple discriminant analysis. Based on the findings of the present study we conclude that high burden on the caregivers is signi ficantly characterized by dependency status of the patient, emotional helps given to the care giver from the society, negative and positive symptom of the patient. The results call for more attention to be given to reduce patients ' positive and negative symptoms, to create awareness in the society to give emotional helps to the caregivers and to economically support the patients so as to minimize their dependency on their caregivers.enThesis