[Formation of self concept in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. An empirical comparative study of psychiatric patients and healthy control probands].

The psychosocial development of psychiatrically ill and mentally healthy young adults is being explored in a series of comparative studies based on developmental tasks typical of this age. In a first study a patient group was compared with a control group with the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire as an indicator of patterns of psychosocial adaptation thus far. The patients showed significantly poorer adaptation on 10 dimensions of psychosocial life. In relation to a representative sample of young adults they especially reported disturbances in their own personality development and in family relations, but judged their adaptation to norms for behavior in public as less impaired. The nonpsychotic patients had a significantly less favorable pattern of self-concepts than the psychotic patients. The patients with affective disorders had a relatively healthy profile of psychosocial development compared with the schizophrenic patients. There was no significant difference between patients with schizophrenia of the disorganized type and other schizophrenic patients. There was a close relationship between subjective measures of self-concept and objective measures of psychosocial development, e.g. premorbid adaptation and current psychosocial development, e.g. premorbid adaptation and current psychosocial competence, in the different subgroups. The findings on self-concept seemed to be largely independent of the present severity of psychopathology.