Aim: Effective treatment in the early stages of schizophrenia is of critical importance to improve the prognosis. Schizophrenia affects patients’ relatives too. The effects of early or late initiation of long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAI-APs) on the patient have been shown, yet their effects on the caregiver are still unknown. We aimed to determine how the time of initiation of LAI-APs affects the caregiver burden by comparing the patients who were started on LAI-APs in the first five years of diagnosis and those who were started in the later period. Methods: Patients were classified as ‘early-LAI’ and ‘late-LAI’ according to the time of beginning LAI. Their caregivers were also classified in the same way, as ‘caregiver-early’ and ‘caregiver-late’, and were compared in terms of caregiver burden. Results: The quality of life, depression, anxiety, and caregiver burden scores of the caregiver-late group were significantly worse. The time of initiation of LAI-APs was found to be a determinant factor for the caregiver burden. Conclusions: This is the first study to investigate the effects of LAI-Aps initiation time on the caregivers to our knowledge. Using LAI-APs in the early stages is associated with better outcomes for the caregiver.