Insight: Effects on Rehabilitation

Synonyms

Awareness of illness

Definition

Insight is an ability to recognize and/or accept one’s own illness and the impact of one’s illness on the capacity to perform daily functions and meet rehabilitation goals. Disruptions in illness recognition often produce discrepancies between self-ratings of skills and ratings of these same skills by treaters and family members. Patients with poor recognition of illness will often display limited motivation in rehabilitation treatment, and poor progress in rehabilitation will often lead to frustration, further impacting the ability of clients to benefit from treatment interventions (Prigatano 1999).

Current Knowledge

Studies have shown that insight, as measured through clinician ratings, as well as discrepancies between relative and patient ratings of patient functioning has been linked to compliance with treatment in integrated holistic brain injury rehabilitation programs (Schonberger et al. 2006). In severe mental illness, poor insight has...