Questions concerning the nature of insight in patients with mental illness have interested clinicians for a long time. To what extent can patients understand disorders which affect their mental function? Does insight carry a prognostic value? Is impaired insight determined by the illness or are other factors important? Despite considerable research examining insight in patients with psychoses, non-psychotic disorders and chronic organic brain syndromes, results are inconclusive and insight remains a source of some mystification. Ivana S. Markova examines the problems involved in studying insight in patients with mental illness in order to provide a clearer understanding of the factors that determine its clinical manifestation. She puts forward a new model to illustrate the relationship between different components of insight in theoretical and clinical terms, and points to directions for future research.
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Preface; Part I. Historical and Clinical: 1. Historical overview; 2. The psychological perspective: gestalt, cognitive and psychoanalytic; 3. Insight in clinical psychiatry: empirical studies; 4. Insight in organic brain syndromes Section 1: Insight into neurological states; 5. Insight in organic brain syndromes Section 2: Insight into dementia; Part II. Conceptual: 6. The conceptualisation of insight; 7. The relational aspects of insight: the 'object' of insight assessment; 8. Towards a structure of insight Section 1: Awareness and insight: an essential distinction?; 9. Towards a structure of insight; Section 2: The relationship between awareness and insight; Index.
