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The Assessment of Insight in Psychosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Anthony David ,
Alec Buchanan ,
Alison Reed  and
Osvaldo Almeida
Anthony David*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, King's College Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry, Denmark Hill, London SE5 9RS
Alec Buchanan
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry
Alison Reed
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry
Osvaldo Almeida
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

An assessment schedule was used to determine the nature of insight in 91 mixed psychotic patients, and to examine its distribution and associations. While all the components of the schedule intercorrelated significantly, scores for compliance were only weakly related to those for ability to label psychotic phenomena as abnormal. Compliance and illness recognition were related to IQ. Total insight score was inversely correlated, moderately, with a global measure of psychopathology derived from the PSE, and was less in patients involuntarily committed. Age, sex, diagnosis, and the number of previous hospital admissions had little effect. The results support the notion that insight is not a unitary concept.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 161 , Issue 5 , November 1992 , pp. 599 - 602
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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