Reliability and Validity of the Knowledge about Depression and Mania Inventory

Abstract

Background: The knowledge that patients with affective disorders have about their illness is attributed increasing importance. For a number of psychiatric disorders, the imparting of information about the illness is now standard treatment. However, the relevance of knowledge about a patient’s disorder has to date not been sufficiently studied. One reason for that is that only few psychometrically validated instruments for the assessment of illness knowledge exist. The aim of this study was the development and psychometric evaluation of a questionnaire to assess knowledge about affective disorders. Methods: The Knowledge about Depression and Mania Inventory (KDMI) was evaluated with a sample of 337 patients with major depression, relatives of patients with depression and schizophrenia, and controls. Results: With the 44-item KDMI, the 3 dimensions knowledge of symptoms, knowledge of treatment and knowledge of coping strategies were differentiated. From these 44 items two 22-item parallel tests were developed for follow-up assessment. The scales showed good internal consistency. There were numerous indicators of the validity and sensitivity to change of the scales. It was shown that older patients and patients with lower levels of education are less knowledgeable about affective disorders. There were significant differences in the scales of the KDMI before and after a psychoeducative group for relatives. Conclusions: The study showed that knowledge about affective disorders can be reliably and validly measured by a questionnaire. Because of its brevity the KDMI is suitable for everyday use in clinical practice, and it forms the basis for further investigation of the significance of illness knowledge, as well as for evaluation of the effects of psychotherapy in this area.

Measurement properties of tools measuring mental health knowledge: a systematic review

“…The 16 tools evaluated mental health knowledge among different populations: community members [30, 33, 43, 44]; mental health patients [28, 34, 38]; patients’ family members and caregivers [29, 30, 32, 38, 40]; police officers [30, 31]; mental health professionals [30, 32, 34]; high school students [41–44]; post-secondary students [39]; athletes [35]; immigrants [36]; or elementary teachers [37]. The tools addressed either mental health knowledge in general [31, 33, 39–41, 43, 44], or knowledge about specific mental disorders, such as depression [34–36, 38, 42], schizophrenia [28–30, 32], anxiety [35], and ADHD [37]. …”

Psychosocial Factors Associated with Knowledge about Affective Disorders in Patients with Depression

“…To assess the knowledge about disorder, form A of the KDMI was used [20] . The KDMI was developed and evaluated with a sample of 175 patients with affective disorders and controls, and assesses three dimensions of knowledge about affective disorders: knowledge of symptoms, treatments and coping.…”

“…The average item diffi culty of the KDMI form A is 0.53 and the average item-total correlation is 0.38. There were numerous indicators of the convergent and discriminative validity of the KDMI scales [20] .…”

“…The KDMI assesses illness knowledge in three areas: symptoms, treatment and coping. The inventory has good reliability and validity and is highly sensitive to change [20] . To date, few studies have looked at patients' and relatives' knowledge about affective disorders despite its great clinical and therapeutic signifi cance.…”

Statistical criteria for parallel tests: A comparison of accuracy and power

“…Parallel tests are sometimes needed so that alternate forms can be administered either to different groups of respondents or to the same group on separate occasions (e.g., Kronmüller et al, 2008;Werheid et al, 2002). The need for parallel tests arises also on estimation of reliability with the split-half method, which implies partitioning the test at hand into two parallel halves (e.g., Altin & Gençöz, 2009;Joyce et al, 2010;Schmidtke & Metternich, 2009;Woods et al, 2008).…”