HoNOS-Secure in a Belgian Community and Forensic Patients with Psychotic Disorders

ABSTRACT

In this study, we examined the psychometric properties of the French Health of the Nation Outcome Scale-Secure (HoNOS-Secure) in a Belgian Community and Medium Secure Unit sample of patients with psychotic disorders (n = 189). Results suggests that individual HoNOS-Secure items have poor interrater reliability. HoNOS-Secure Behavior and Impairment subscales have good reliability, while others fell far below the acceptable cutoff (Secure and Social subscales). The Security and items subscale showed acceptable but not optimal convergence with risk assessment measures. The Behavior subscale appeared to perform as equally well as the Security subscale regarding convergent validity. The HoNOS-Secure Symptoms and Impairment subscales showed good convergence with clinical measures. However, correlations between the Security items and risk assessment tools, and psychopathy requires further examination. Although outperformed by the DUNDRUM Toolkit and the Camberwell Assessment of Needs-Forensic Version-S, the HoNOS-Secure appears to be able to differentiate between security levels.

KEYWORDS:

• HoNOS-Secure
• HoNOS
• Psychosis
• Schizophrenia
• DUNDRUM
• CANFOR

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Although all patients at the MSU of the Center Hospitalier Jean Titeca are supposed to be rated on all clinical measures, some patients have not yet been rated on all instruments, hence the different sample sizes.