Manish N. Thakre1, Sudhir L. Mahajan2, Avinash Turankar3, Prachi Jain4
AIM
Schizophrenia is a chronic illness requiring long term treatment adherence. There are many factors affecting the adherence to treatment and insight is amongst the most important factor affecting the adherence. In this study we tried to study the Correlation between Insight and Adherence to treatment in patients with Schizophrenia.
METHODS
This is a cross sectional observational study conducted in the Department of Psychiatry of a tertiary care teaching hospital in Central India. A total of 100 consecutive patients with schizophrenia in remission meeting various inclusion and exclusion criteria were recruited for the study. Socio-demographic and clinical data was collected. Insight was assessed using Sai-E (Schedule for assessment of insight-Expanded) and Adherence was assessed using BARS (Brief Adherence Rating Scale).
RESULTS
The mean Insight score (Sai-E) in non-adherent group was 12.79 (SD:4.04); in partial adherent group was 13.24 (SD:3.727) and in adherent group was 15.19 (SD: 3.324). The correlation between the level of Insight (as assessed on Sai-E) and the degree of adherence was assessed using Spearman’s rho coefficient of correlation and the results were statistically significant implying that as the insight scores increases adherence to treatment increase (i.e. positive correlation). There was no statistically significant correlation between Insight and any of the socio-demographic and clinical variables. There was positive correlation between adherence and education (p value:0.02). In the same way there was negative correlation (p value: 0.05) between adherence and illness duration.
CONCLUSION
This is first study from Central India assessing various factors affecting adherence to treatment in Schizophrenia. In our study, insight was found to have positive correlation with treatment adherence. Also, there was positive correlation between adherence and education indicating that higher the education better is the adherence. In the same way there was negative correlation between adherence and illness duration indicating that more the illness duration poorer is the adherence to treatment.
