The VAGUS insight into psychosis scale – Self-report and clinician-rated versions

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop self-report and clinician-rated versions of an insight scale that would be easy to administer, sensitive to small changes, and inclusive of the core dimensions of clinical insight into psychosis. Ten-item self-report (VAGUS-SR) and five-item clinician-rated (VAGUS-CR) scales were designed to measure the dimensions of insight into psychosis and evaluated in 215 and 140 participants, respectively (www.vagusonline.com). Tests of reliability and validity were performed. Both the VAGUS-SR and VAGUS-CR showed good internal consistency and reliability. They demonstrated good convergent and discriminant validity. Both versions were strongly correlated with one another and with the Schedule for the Assessment of Insight and Birchwood Insight Scale. Exploratory factor analyses identified three possible latent components of insight. The VAGUS-CR and VAGUS-SR are valid, reliable and easy to administer. They are build on previous insight scales with separate clinician-rated and self-report versions. The VAGUS-SR exhibited a multidimensional factor structure. Using a 10-point Likert scale for each item, the VAGUS has the capacity to detect small, temporally sensitive changes in insight, which is essential for intervention studies with neurostimulation or rapidly acting medications.

Vestibular stimulation improves insight into illness in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

“…IMP-INS was measured at baseline using the clinician-rated Schedule for the Assessment of Insight – Expanded (SAI-E) (David, 1990) and the VAGUS Self-report version (VAGUS-SR) (Gerretsen et al, 2014c). VAGUS-SR was used to measure changes in IMP-INS following CVS due to its temporal sensitivity in comparison with the SAI-E. VAGUS-SR (www.vagusonline.com) is a 10 item self-report measure designed to be easy to administer, sensitive to small changes, and, like the SAI-E, inclusive of the core dimensions of clinical insight into psychosis, i.e.…”

“…VAGUS-SR was used to measure changes in IMP-INS following CVS due to its temporal sensitivity in comparison with the SAI-E. VAGUS-SR (www.vagusonline.com) is a 10 item self-report measure designed to be easy to administer, sensitive to small changes, and, like the SAI-E, inclusive of the core dimensions of clinical insight into psychosis, i.e. (i) Illness awareness or acceptance, (ii) symptom awareness and accurate symptom attribution, (iii) awareness of need for treatment, and (iv) awareness of negative consequences of the illness (Gerretsen et al, 2014c). Lower scores on both SAI-E and VAGUS-SR represent greater impairment of insight into illness.…”

Validity of the Birchwood insight scale in patients with schizophrenia spectrum- and bipolar disorders

“…Several self-report questionnaires have been developed for use in psychotic disorders (IS; Birchwood et al, 1994;VAGUS;Gerretsen et al, 2014;Markova and Berrios, 1992;Markova et al, 2003), BD (Wong et al, 1999), and to measure insight in psychotherapy (IOS; Gori et al, 2015). It is, however, of interest to investigate insight transdiagnostically; i.e.…”

Patients’ Knowledge about Prescribed Antipsychotics and Medication Adherence in Schizophrenia: A Cross-Sectional Survey

“…The following assessments were also performed: the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) [15], Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) [16], VAGUS [17] for insight into illness, Medi-cation Possession Ratios (MPRs) [18], the Japanese version of the Drug Attitude Inventory-10 (DAI-10) [19,20], and the Japanese version of the Morisky Simplified Self-Report Measure of Adherence [21,22]. MPR is defined as total days a medication was actually dispensed to patients divided by treatment days.…”