Awareness of being a patient and its relevance to insight into illness in patients with schizophrenia

This article presents the development of the Awareness of Being a Patient S cale (ABPS), a 25-item self-report scale to measure the awareness of schizo phrenic patients, Awareness is defined in terms of a patient's psychologica l attitude toward the psychiatric situation, and is to be evaluated from th e standpoint of Parsons' sich-role concept by assessing the recognition of the need for treatment and acceptance of the treatment situation. It is hyp othesized that awareness is a factor in the motivation to receive treatment . Closely related to the awareness is the insight into illness, a clinical construct comprising a patient's understanding of psychotic illness and sym ptoms. There also seems to be an overlap between them. However, the differe nce is that awareness principally pertains to a patient's perspective, not addressing the precise understanding of illness and symptoms, while the fra me of reference in assessing insight is from the viewpoint of psychiatry. I n examining properties of the ABPS, it is demonstrated that the ABPS has sa tisfactory reliability, favorable concurrent validity, and significant valu e in discriminating between long-term stable outpatients and recently admit ted and long-term hospitalized patients. This study indicates that the awar eness of being a patient has clinical importance and the ABPS is an efficie nt means of measuring such awareness. Copyright (C) 1999 by W.B. Saunders C ompany.