The Maristán stigma scale: a standardized international measure of the stigma of schizophrenia and other psychoses.

Background: People with schizophrenia face prejudice and discrimination from a number of sources including professionals and families. The degree of stigma perceived and experienced varies across cultures and communities. We aimed to develop a cross-cultural measure of the stigma perceived by people with schizophrenia.

Patients' opinions about knowing their risk for depression and what to do about it. The predictD-qualitative study.

Background: The predictD study developed and validated a risk algorithm for predicting the onset of major depression in primary care. We aimed to explore the opinion of patients about knowing their risk for depression and the values and criteria upon which these opinions are based.

Methods: A maximum variation sample of patients was taken, stratified by city, age, gender, immigrant status, socio-economic status and lifetime depression.

Standardised measures of needs, stigma and informal care in schizophrenia using a bottom-up, cross-cultural approach.

Background There is a lack of instruments to measure the needs, stigma and informal care of people with schizophrenia that take account of sociocultural variation and patients' and formal and informal carers' opinions and experiences. Aims To develop questionnaires to measure stigma, needs and informal (non-professional) care for people with schizophrenia. Method We undertook the study in seven countries and in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Standardization of the MARISTÁN scale to measure needs in people with schizophrenia and related psychoses.

Objective: Existing measures of needs in severe mental illness have been developed mainly from professionals' viewpoints and are Eurocentric. Our aim was to standardize a measure of the needs of people with schizophrenia across several cultures and based on users' own viewpoints.

Method: An instrument to measure needs, based on qualitative data on users', carers' and professionals' views, was tested in 164 people with schizophrenia or related psychoses in six countries.

[Mental health care: perceptions of people with schizophrenia and their carers].

The current study aims to discover the opinions of patients and their (informal and formal) carers concerning the mental health care of individuals with long term schizophrenic disorders within different contexts and cultures. It's a qualitative study with focus groups,in which 6 research centers (from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Spain, England and Venezuela) participated. Eight focus groups were conducted in each center, totaling 303 individuals in 46 groups.

Existential questions in schizophrenia: perception of patients and caregivers.

Objective: To examine existential questions in the daily life of people with schizophrenia and their caregivers.

Methods: Qualitative study with focus groups. 146 people with schizophrenia (55% men) and 80 caregivers (75% women) participated.