Abstract

The study investigated social support, resilience and coping strategies as predictors of psychological well-being among caregivers of psychiatric patients in Makurdi metropolis using the cross-sectional design. One hundred and eighty-seven (187) caregivers were drawn from the federal medical Centre using the purposive sampling technique, out of which 29(15.5%) were male, and 158(84.5%) were female. Their ages ranged from 25-48 years with a mean age of 34years, (SD=5.9). The descriptive statistics, hierarchical regressions and Pearson’s correlations were used for statistical analysis. Results from the hypotheses showed that social support had a significant influence on psychological well-being, resilience had a significant influence on psychological well-being, there was a significant influence of coping strategies on psychological wellbeing and joint influence of social support, resilience and coping strategies on psychological well-being among caregivers of psychiatric patients. Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that a caregiver’s ability to cope with stress arising from caring for psychiatric patients, psychological sessions should be organized for caregivers of psychiatric patients to help train them on effective coping strategies to use the amount of psychological, emotional, financial and physical resources they receive as support from friends, family and significant others.