Tools for a clinical assessment of patients' attitudes toward schizophrenic illness: 2. "My experience of illness" scale (MEIS)
Wciórka, J.
Psychiatria Polska 30(3): 397-413
1996
ISSN/ISBN: 0033-2674 PMID: 8848502 Document Number: 465376
Rationale and empirical construction of MEIS ("My experience of Illness" Scale)--a tool for self-rating of patients' attitudes toward their experience of schizophrenic illness, were presented. MEIS questionnaire consists of 6 scales. Each of them is an incomplete sentence which should be matched with one of five--most appropriate from the patients' perspective--answers presented as the so-called "visual analogy scale". Factor analysis of the MEIS supplies three-component solution with two scales-sentences in each factor. The factors may be interpreted as: (1) identification of experience of illness with self, (2) its evaluation, and (3) patients' reflectiveness toward the experience of illness. Some evidences allow to interpret the summarized score of MDC as an indicator of the patients' whole attitude toward his or her experience of illness in the sense of its "integrating" with or "isolating" from other life experiences. The results of self-rating of patients' attitudes are moderately correlated with rating of them by an observing clinician (EIS scale). Empirical findings supporting reliability, validity, and feasibility of the MEIS were presented. It may be useful as a subjective measure of patients' attitudes toward experience of their illness.