Insight in Psychiatry [Hardcover]

This book examines the clinical and theoretical problems of insight across a range of mental disorders.Questions concerning the nature of insight in patients with mental illness have interested clinicians for a long time. To what extent can patients understand disorders which affect their mental function? Does insight carry a prognostic value? Is impaired insight determined by the illness or are other factors important? This book examines the problems involved in studying insight in patients with mental illness and puts forward a new model to illustrate the relationship between different components of insight in theoretical and clinical terms.Questions concerning the nature of insight in patients with mental illness have interested clinicians for a long time. To what extent can patients understand disorders which affect their mental function? Does insight carry a prognostic value? Is impaired insight determined by the illness or are other factors important? This book examines the problems involved in studying insight in patients with mental illness and puts forward a new model to illustrate the relationship between different components of insight in theoretical and clinical terms.Despite considerable research examining insight in patients with psychoses, non-psychotic disorders and chronic organic brain syndromes, results are inconclusive and insight remains a source of some mystification. To what extent can patients understand disorders which affect their mental function? Does insight bear a prognostic value? Is impaired insight determined by the illness or are other factors of equal importance? Ivana S. Marková examines the problems involved in studying insight in patients with mental illness in order to provide a clearer understanding of the factors that determine its clinical manifestation.Preface; Part I. Historical and Clinical: 1. Historical overview; 2. The psychological perspective: gestalt, cognitive and psychoanalytic; 3. Insight in clinical psycl#'