Open AccessPatients responses to diagnoses of mental disorders: Development and validation of a reliable self‐report measure
Author(s) -
Schnell Thomas,
Kehring Anja,
Moritz Steffen,
Morgenroth Olaf
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of methods in psychiatric research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.275
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1557-0657
pISSN - 1049-8931
DOI - 10.1002/mpr.1854
Subject(s) - medical diagnosis , dysfunctional family , psychology , clinical psychology , confirmatory factor analysis , structural equation modeling , coping (psychology) , psychiatry , medicine , statistics , mathematics , pathology
Objectives Psychiatric patients are regularly informed about diagnoses. Treatment guidelines assume that informing patients fosters functional coping processes, but few research exists on how patients respond. Thus, the objective was to develop a standardized self‐report measure to assess patients reactions to diagnoses. Methods Fifty nine items were generated based on a qualitative study. The process of item selection and determination of the factor structure were performed on a sample of 252 patients: Results of an explorative factor analysis with a randomly split sub‐sample 1 were cross‐validated by confirmatory factor analysis on sub‐sample 2. The revised 26‐item instrument was revaluated using data from an independent sample of 1.271 patients with different diagnoses. Results Three functional and three dysfunctional processing styles emerged from the analyses and provided good model fit in the revaluation study (TLI = 0.935; CFI = 0.943; RMSEA = 0.051; SRMR = 0.048). Variance‐analytical calculations and post hoc analyses revealed significant differences among diagnoses with regard to coping styles, such as schizophrenia was associated with self‐stigmatization and anorexia nervosa showed pronounced over‐identification. Overall, various diagnosis‐dependent specifics were found. Conclusions As patients reactions to diagnoses vary substantially, their formation, impact on treatment and overall cause should be investigated in further studies.