• Carmen de la Cuesta Benjumea, M Virtudes López Gracia, and Claudia Patricia Arredondo González.
• Departamento de Psicología de la Salud, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, España.
• Aten Primaria. 2019 Oct 1; 51 (8): 471-478.

AimTo know and understand the strategies carried out by the relatives of people with mental health problems in the care of their sick relatives.DesignQualitative study SETTING: Mental Health Service (SESCAM) and Social Health Centres of Castilla-La Mancha region (Spain).ParticipantsTwenty-four adult family members who live and care for a family member who suffers a mental health crisis. The participants were contacted both through the health directorate of the area and a social health foundation. They were selected with purpose and by snowball sampling.MethodTwenty-two semi-structured were conducted and analysed according to the constructivist grounded theory procedures between January 2014 and February 2016. The theoretical sampling guided the obtaining of the data that ended with the saturation of the emerging categories.ResultsA person with a mental problem during a crisis becomes a stranger and is inaccessible to family members. In this situation the efforts are aimed at the recovery of the relative, to take them out of the unreason and to keep them in a day-to-day normality constructed for them. Thanks to this, the ill relative is integrated into family life.ConclusionsFamily caregivers of people with mental problems struggle not to lose them in a crisis and to maintain family ties. Primary care professionals must give importance to these links, because it determines their care strategies during a crisis and the strategies to conserve the family member.Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

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