Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Development of a Virtual Reality Assessment of Everyday Living Skills
Published on: April 23, 2014
Development of the Illness Perception Questionnaire Mental Health
Cilia Witteman1, Lisabeth Bolks, Giel Hutschemaekers
1Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. c.witteman@socsci.ru.nl
Background:
It has been suggested that illness perceptions in mental health are related to treatment outcomes.
Aims:
We aimed to develop a short generic questionnaire to assess clients' problem perceptions in mental health, congruent with the Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ) for somatic health.
Methods:
We adapted the IPQ-R (Moss-Morris, R., Weinman, J., Petrie, K.J., Horne, R., Cameron, L.D., & Buick, D. ( 2002 ). Psychology and Health, 17, 1-16) to psychological complaints, in particular the IPQ-R's scales that assess clients' perceptions of what their problem actually is and what its causes are. We administered our adapted instrument, the IPQ-MH, to large groups of mental health clients, and subsequently performed psychometric analyses over the scores.
Results:
The identity scale of the IPQ-MH differentiates different clients; the structure scale of the IPQ-MH replicates that of the original IPQ-R; the cause scale reliably measures clients' attributions of causes to their mental problems.
Conclusions:
We conclude that our IPQ-MH can reliably assess clients' mental health problem perceptions.
Related Concept Videos
Self-Report Tests of Personality
Dimensions of Health and Illness
Assessment of the Gastrointestinal System II: Health Perception Pattern
Health Perception Patterns
Health perception patterns offer valuable insights into a patient's lifestyle habits and how they may impact their GI health. These patterns include:
Concepts of Health and Illness
Classification of Illness
An illness is a response to a disease in which the person's level of functioning is changed compared with a previous level. The general classification of illness includes acute and chronic.
Acute illness is severe and...
Models of Health Promotion and Illness Prevention I
The health belief model (HBM) attempts to predict health-related behavior in specific belief patterns. According to the HBM, a person's...