Abstract
This study investigates the factors that clinicians use to make clinical judgements of insight and their confidence in using clinical judgement across three clinical and forensic assessment domains. The 12 participating clinicians rated 30 DVD vignettes of psychiatric patients with a psychotic disorder. Qualitative analyses revealed eight themes that align closely with the dimensions of insight reported in the literature. However, it is unclear how clinicians weigh each dimension. The clinicians were more confident in making a judgement on insight for treatment planning than for involuntary treatment or fitness to stand trial evaluations. They wanted more information when making a judgement in the forensic domains, recognising the greater consequences for the patients and the greater level of scrutiny of their judgements in legal settings compared to clinical settings. The data obtained suggest that both clinical and forensic assessment of insight would benefit from empirically derived structured professional judgement (SPJ) tools.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Ethical standards
Declaration of conflicts of interest
Dylan Patrick Galloghly has declared no conflicts of interest.
Greg E. Dear has declared no conflicts of interest.
Ethical approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Human Ethics Committees of Edith Cowan University and the Western Australian North Metropolitan Health Service and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.