Background: Mental illness can affect people during all stages of life and it's a major challenge to public health. Mental illness not only affects the individual but it also affects the relatives around the stricken person in a large extent. It's important to get an understanding of the relatives and their changed life situation in order to be able to respond and support the related in a good way.

Aim: The aim was to highlight the relative's experiences of living close to a relative affected by mental illness.

Method: A method to contribute to evidence-based nursing based on analysis of qualitative research was used to get a better understanding of relative's experiences. An analysis of ninequalitative articles was conducted. The analysisresulted in two main themes and seven subthemes.

Results: This study resulted in two main themes; "To be able to keep on fighting" and "To live with difficult changes".

Conclusion: This study showed that related persons to mentally ill relatives experienced many different feelings when their lives changed. Their relative's personality changed significantly and the future was seen as hopeful and uncertain. The related took a caregiver role, which meant a lot of responsibility and their lives changed drastically. A struggle was experienced for their relatives getting proper healthcare and the environment showed lack of understanding.