Department of Psychiatric Outpatient Treatment, Psychiatric University Hospital of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Psychopathology. 2012;45(4):259-69. doi: 10.1159/000330262. Epub 2012 May 30.
Because the mere definition of insight from the therapist's viewpoint may not be sufficient to identify treatment targets for adherence enhancement, we need assessment strategies which are more sensitive to the patient's perspective. Illness perception (IP), defined as the beliefs a patient holds about his/her health problems, has been shown to affect coping in the context of a physical or mental illness, e.g. compliance behaviour. To assess IP in people diagnosed with schizophrenia, the Illness Perception Questionnaire for Schizophrenia (IPQS) was developed. The aim of the present study was to analyse the psychometric properties of the German version of the IPQS.
The study sample consisted of 128 German-speaking outpatients suffering from chronic schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. To achieve comparability with the validation of the English scale version, the same constructs were assessed: psychopathology, depression, and beliefs about medication. Furthermore, insight into one's illness was assessed. Internal consistency, test-retest reliability and construct validity including convergent and discriminant validity were analysed.
Five of eight IPQS subscales were found to be internally reliable and all subscales demonstrated high stability over time. Correlations with validity measures indicated that the subscales assess dimensions of a construct, which is distinct from psychopathology, depression, beliefs about medication and insight, except for the Identity subscale which substantially overlapped with measures of insight.
The German version of the IPQS is an essentially reliable and valid measure of IP for German-speaking people with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder. This may encourage its usage in further studies investigating the impact of subjective beliefs about mental health problems on outcome and recovery in schizophrenia.
由于仅仅从治疗师的角度定义洞察力可能不足以确定增强依从性的治疗目标，我们需要更敏感地从患者角度评估的策略。疾病感知（IP）定义为患者对其健康问题的信念，已被证明会影响身体或精神疾病的应对方式，例如遵医嘱行为。为了评估被诊断为精神分裂症的患者的 IP，开发了精神分裂症疾病感知问卷（IPQS）。本研究的目的是分析德国版 IPQS 的心理测量特性。
研究样本由 128 名讲德语的慢性精神分裂症或分裂情感障碍的门诊患者组成。为了与英语量表版本的验证具有可比性，评估了相同的结构：精神病理学、抑郁和对药物的信念。此外，还评估了对疾病的洞察力。分析了内部一致性、重测信度和结构效度，包括收敛效度和区分效度。
八个 IPQS 分量表中的五个被发现具有内部可靠性，所有分量表在时间上都具有高度稳定性。与有效性测量的相关性表明，这些分量表评估了一个与精神病理学、抑郁、对药物的信念和洞察力不同的结构维度，除了身份分量表与洞察力测量有很大重叠。
德国版 IPQS 是一种用于德语人群的精神分裂症谱系障碍的 IP 的基本可靠和有效的测量工具。这可能鼓励在进一步研究中使用它，以调查对心理健康问题的主观信念对精神分裂症的结果和恢复的影响。
