Abstract : The literature on care givers of the mentally ill indicate high amounts of objective burden and distress in these care givers. However, most of these studies were carried out in western cultures. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine objective and subjective The convenience sample consisted of 23 Bahraini care givers: 10 selected from the community setting and 13 from the inpatient setting. The data were collected by means of in-person interviews with the care givers which were conducted by the author using a semi-structured interview schedule. This schedule is a modified version of the Social and Behavioral Assessment Schedule (SBAS) which was designed by Platt and his associates (1981). The original SBAS has well established reliability and sensitivity. The modified schedule consists of six sections addressing aspects of the patient's illness, care giver's burden and social support. The findings of the study have replicated many of the findings of previous studies. Measures of objective and subjective burden were found to be significantly higher in the community group of care givers especially females who have longer contact hours with chronically ill patients. However, care giver's distress due to the patient's behavioral disturbance was significantly higher in the in-patient group. Aspects of social support were also found to be related differently to various aspects of burden. The implications for research and practice are discussed. Recommendations are made for the study to be replicated with a larger sample of care givers using a longitudinal design and highly reliable measures of psychological distress.