Insight in schizophrenia: a meta-analysis
Section snippets
Method
Based on a preliminary review of the literature, it was apparent that insight was conceptualized in terms of several dimensions. However, three basic components—awareness of mental illness, awareness of the consequences of mental disorder and awareness of the effects of medication—were measured in most studies Birchwood et al., 1994, Debowska et al., 1998. In addition, awareness of individual symptoms and attribution of symptoms to mental disorder were also considered important dimensions of
Funnel plot analysis
Prior to examining the results of the meta-analysis, an analysis of possible publication bias was conducted, using the funnel plot (Taylor and Tweedie, 2000). For each symptom domain, the total effect size was plotted by the sample size for each study. These graphs resulted in funnel shaped scatter plots, with both tails of the funnels well-formed, suggesting that the nonsignificant results were not missed and no publication bias existed.
Description of studies included in the analysis
A total of 40 studies provided data for computing the
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to estimate the magnitude and direction of the relationships between insight and symptom domains in schizophrenia and also, to determine moderator variables that were influencing the relationships in published English studies. The results from this meta-analysis indicated that the relationships between insight and symptom domains in schizophrenia were significant, yet modest. To summarize, the results indicated that there was a negative correlation between insight
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