Approaches to the assessment of the structure and phenomenology of critical awareness in the context of non-psychotic mental disorders

Abstract

Aim: systematization of the phenomena of critical self-awareness in the context of non-psychotic mental disorders and development of a tool for assessing the profile of its disorders. Materials and methods. In the period of 2020–2023, a prospective study was conducted on a contingent of outpatients with diagnoses established in the conditions of the Department of Borderline Conditions of the Municipal non-commercial enterprise “Regional Clinical Institution for the Provision of Psychiatric Care” of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Council. 75 patients: 38 men, 37 women, mean age 38.9 ± 8.6 years, without exacerbation of severe somatic diseases, without diagnostically significant psychoactive substances use history. Methods: clinical and anamnestic, psychodiagnostic in the form of a semi-structured interview, statistical using α-Cronbach’s coefficient. Results. 27 phenomena were identified as part of 7 separate components of critical self-awareness. Based on the obtained data, a psycho-diagnostic tool was formed in the form of a questionnaire, where a multiple choice question ranked on a 5-point Likert-type scale was formulated for each phenomenon. The reliability of the questionnaire according to the indicator of internal consistency of the subscales according to the Cronbach α coefficient is from “acceptable” 0.7072 to “good” 0.8820. Conclusions. The developed psychodiagnostic questionnaire can be used in further studies aimed at analyzing the problem of critical self-awareness in patients with non-psychotic mental disorders.

Keywords

• anosognosia
• alexithymia
• somatoform disorder
• anxiety-phobic disorder
• criticality
• psychodiagnostic questionnaire