Self-administered instrument to measure the patient's experience of recovery after first-episode psychosis: development and validation of the Psychosis Recovery Inventory.

Objective: Patients who are recovering from a first-episode psychosis face specific and complex issues that are related to their illness and treatment experiences, such as the appraisal of the extent of their recovery and the risk of relapse. Currently, no instrument provides a comprehensive assessment of these related attitudes. A novel self-administered rating scale for the measurement of key perceptions during the recovery stage after a first-episode psychosis is presented. The Psychosis Recovery Inventory (PRI) is designed to specifically address a number of closely related issues that are faced by patients who are recovering from a first-episode psychosis.

Method: The process of development of the PRI involved the generation of items from qualitative interviews, the construction and refinement of these items and a validation study. The longitudinal stability of the PRI items was assessed in a test-retest reliability study in which 20 patients completed the retest within 4 weeks. The internal consistency and convergent validity of the PRI were evaluated by a comparison of the PRI subscale scores and the Scale to Assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder and Drug Attitude Inventory scores in a sample of 48 first-episode psychosis patients.

Results: The validation study shows that the PRI is an instrument with a good test-retest reliability, internal consistency and convergent validity.

Conclusions: This pragmatic, low burden, self-administered scale can be applied in clinical and research settings to obtain reliable information on the attitudes of patients on a range of interrelated issues in the recovery stage that follows a first-episode psychosis.