Assessing cognitive representations of mental health problems. II. The illness perception questionnaire for...

To design a questionnaire to assess cognitive representations of mental health problems held by relatives of people diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The ways in which relatives respond to patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia has been shown to impact on outcome. Understanding variation in relatives' responses is essential if successful interventions are to be developed. This study builds on previous research exploring attributions that relatives make about symptoms. The development of a new measure to assess beliefs that relatives have about schizophrenia is reported; The Illness Perception Questionnaire for Schizophrenia - Relatives version (IPQS-Relatives).

Sixty-two relatives completed the IPQS-Relatives, along with measures of general psychopathology, burden, appraisal of coping, and expressed emotion. The psychometric properties of the IPQS-Relatives were analysed, including internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and discriminant and concurrent validity.

IPQS-Relatives subscales were shown to be internally consistent and stable over time. Correlations with measures of general psychopathology, distress, burden, coping, and criticism indicate that the subscales have good concurrent validity.

The IPQS-Relatives can be used to assess relatives' beliefs about schizophrenia. This measure may aid family interventions that target beliefs associated with negative outcome for patients and their relatives.