ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
This article is part of the Research TopicCaregiver Burden in Alzheimer's and Other Chronic ConditionsView all 7 articles
Hope Mediates the Association Between Anxiety and Caregivers' Preparedness in Schizophrenia: A Cross-Sectional Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Psychiatric, Shandong Mental Health Center, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- 2Department of Nursing, Shandong Mental Health Center, Shandong University, Jinan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: This study investigated the level of preparedness of caregivers of patients with schizophrenia and explored hope as a mediator between anxiety and caregivers' preparedness. Methods: This correlational cross-sectional study included 375 caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. Participants completed a self-administered questionnaire on preparedness, anxiety, and hope. Descriptive analysis, Pearson's correlations, and hierarchical linear regression modeling were performed to examine the associations between anxiety, hope, and caregivers' preparedness using SPSS 22.0. The PROCESS v3.3 macro was used to analyze the mediating effect of hope. Results: Caregivers' preparedness, anxiety, and hope scores were (20.79 ± 5.25), (10.38 ± 4.56), and (36.01 ± 5.25) respectively. Anxiety was negatively correlated with hope and caregivers' preparedness (r = - 0.478, p < 0.001; r = - 0.290, p < 0.001), and hope was positively correlated with caregivers' preparedness (r = 0.513, p < 0.001). Hope partially mediated the relationship between anxiety and caregivers' preparedness, accounting for 24.8% of the total effect. Conclusions: Anxiety among caregivers of patients with schizophrenia influences their preparedness and is mediated by hope. Enhancing hope among caregivers can reduce the impact of low preparedness caused by high anxiety.
Keywords: Anxiety, hope, preparedness, Caregivers, Schizophrenia, Mediation
Received: 23 Jun 2025; Accepted: 05 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 liu, Teng, teng and Zou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Guiyuan Zou, zouguiyuan00@126.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.