The association between treatment beliefs and engagement in care in first episode psychosis

Abstract

Disengagement from mental health services poses an important problem for people with psychosis. Lack of treatment adherence is associated with poorer physical health, reduced social functioning, an increased rate of relapse and an increased likelihood of being legally detained (O'Brien et al., 2009). Previous research has uncovered differences in treatment beliefs based upon either differences in causal attributions (McCabe and Priebe, 2004) and ethnic/racial group (Jimenez et al., 2012), however the impact of differing treatment beliefs on engagement in care has not been examined. This is an important extension since if it can be evidenced that differing treatment beliefs are associated with variation in engagement, services may seek to realign to account for these differences. We aimed to complete a secondary analysis of a pre-existing cohort to examine; 1) whether different treatment beliefs were associated with engagement in care; and 2) the influence of sociodemographic differences on treatment beliefs and whether these differences extended to engagement in care.