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The ward atmosphere scale for psychiatric inpatients with intellectual disability: a pilot study
- Authors:
- BAKKEN Trine Lise, ROSSBERG Jan Ivar, FRIIS Svein
- Journal article citation:
- Advances in Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities, 6(5), 2012, pp.265-272.
- Publisher:
- Emerald
The Ward Atmosphere Scale (WAS) is a self-report questionnaire and the most commonly used instrument to measure aspects of treatment environment, which is a factor related to both treatment outcome and patient satisfaction for psychiatric inpatients. This study aimed to examine whether adult psychiatric inpatients with intellectual disability could complete the WAS in a meaningful way. It was conducted with 17 patients and 21 staff members in a specialised psychiatric inpatient unit at the Oslo University Hospital, Norway. This article describes the methodology, analysis and results. It reports that patients with mild intellectual disabilities were able to answer the WAS with some help, but that patients with moderate intellectual disabilities had major difficulties with understanding more than half of the items. The authors conclude that there is a need for further research on how inpatients with intellectual disability and mental illness perceive ward atmosphere, and that a replication study should use a shorter version of the WAS.