The "carers' needs assessment for Schizophrenia": an instrument to assess the needs of relatives caring for schizophrenia patients.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: For the purpose of service planning, an instrument was developed for the systematic assessment of interventions needed by the caregivers of schizophrenia patients. METHOD: The development of this instrument was based on in-depth interviews and focus groups. It consists of 18 areas describing common problems of schizophrenia caregivers. For each of these problem areas several possible interventions are offered. Concurrent validity, inter-rater and retest reliability were tested among 50 caregivers. RESULTS: The kappa values for the inter-rater reliability are predominantly excellent (kappa > 0.75). The values for the retest reliability show a wide range between excellent (kappa > 0.75) and fair agreement (kappa 0.40-0.60). The significant correlations found between summary scores of this new instrument and several sub-scales of the Family Problem Questionnaire support the assumption that the concurrent validity is satisfactory. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that this instrument is both valid and reliable.