The relationship between attitudes towards the illness and insight in patients with schizophrenia

Abstract

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: Studies have shown that patients with psychiatric illness not only feel being discriminated by others, but also discriminate themselves. It is expected that such findings would hinder their acceptance and insight of the illness. The present study aims to explore the relationship between attitudes towards the psychiatric label and insight of the illness. METHODS: A 30-item symptom checklist including psychotic symptoms and general stress responses was constructed. Patients with schizophrenia were asked to decide which items were psychotic symptoms. Thirty-two patients with schizophrenia were randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups. Patients in the experimental group were explained that the checklist contained psychotic symptoms he/she had prior to completing the checklist, while such an explanation was not given in the control group. RESULTS: The preliminary results showed that patients in the experimental group (N= 17) committed more errors (mean error rate = 0.56) in differentiating psychotic symptoms from general stress responses than the control group (N = 15) (mean error rate = 0.42). Patients in the experimental group also tend to include psychotic symptoms into general stress responses (mean commission errors = 10) than the control group (mean commission errors = 8). CONCLUSION: However, due to the limitations of the small sample size and between-group design, conducting a within-subject study would be useful to confirm the relationship between patients’ internalization of psychiatric label and awareness of psychotic symptoms.