Abstract

INTRODUCTION:

Previous studies have suggested that lack of insight into mental disorder can be an important predicting factor involving the course of psychotic disorders mainly regarding compliance with treatment. The Scale to Assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder--SUMD is a semi-structured open interview that evaluates global insight, insight into illness and insight into symptoms. The SUMD has shown good reliability and validity and has demonstrated certain advantages over previous measures of insight, suggesting the usefulness of a multidimensional view of this complex concept.

OBJECTIVE:

The aim of this study is to translate, adapt and test the reliability of the SUMD in schizophrenic patients.

METHODS:

This study involved 35 schizophrenic patients according to the DSM-IV criteria, who where under treatment in the Schizophrenia Program of the Federal University of São Paulo. Two independent examiners conducted the reliability study simultaneously.

RESULTS:

The results demonstrated that the SUMD achieved a good intraclass reliability coefficients between investigators--ICC ranged from 0.55 to 0.97--for the general items to assess awareness of mental disorder and 0.56 to 0.98--for the symptoms items.

DISCUSSION:

These coefficients were similar to those found by the researchers who developed this scale. The SUMD scale has proven to be easily applied and may be deemed an useful instrument with good psychometrics capacities in researches involving schizophrenic subjects.