The Impact Message Inventory (IMI-C): generalizability of patients' command and relationship messages across psychiatric nurses

Staff's perception of Patients' affiliation and control in a Highly Secure Psychiatric Setting

Effective interactions between patients and staff have been associated with positive ward climate and therapeutic effects, but also pose a challenge in high secure forensic psychiatric settings. The goal of this study was to gain more insight into i) the characteristics that play a role in how staff members perceive the interpersonal style of patients, and ii) whether these perceptions are related to patients' evaluation of ward climate and satisfaction with daily staff. Staff members (n = 69), rated the interpersonal style of 102 male patients. Satisfaction with daily staff and ward climate were rated by 45 patients. Results show that patient characteristics (primary diagnosis, patient age, disruptive behavior, recent problems with symptoms of major mental disorder and recent problems with treatment or supervision response) were related to how staff perceived the interpersonal style (i.e., affiliation and control) of patients. Furthermore, the level of affiliation was positively related to patients' satisfaction with daily staff. Patients that were seen as more controlling by staff were less satisfied with the safety on their ward (as a factor of ward climate). The results indicate that perception of patients' interpersonal style entails patient related information and can be relevant for staff to use in their work.

The Impact Message Inventory-Circumplex (IMI-C): a replication study of its circumplex structure in a Dutch sample

The 56-items Impact Message Inventory-Circumplex (IMI-C) has been developed to describe the interpersonal styles of target persons in terms of the 2-dimensional interpersonal circle, divided in 8 subscales (octants). The IMI-C is based on the assumption that a target person's interpersonal styles can validly be measured by assessing the internal (cognitive and emotional) reactions of the IMI-C respondent (e.g., therapists), interacting with the target person (e.g., psychotherapy patients). This replication study tested the circumplexity of a computer-delivered Dutch IMI-C. The computer-delivered Dutch IMI-C approached circumplexity in a large clinical sample (N = 812) of psychotherapy and psychiatric patients, after removing 3 items from the Submissive octant scale. These 3 items clearly disturbed the IMI-C circumplex structure. It is concluded that, even with the inevitable problem of nested data, circumplexity was approached sufficiently to justify the interpretation of the IMI-C at the octant level, provided that the 3 troublesome Submissive items are removed from the calculations of octant scores. Our replication test of the Dutch IMI-C circumplexity might be an impetus for researchers in the United States to invest in the further validation of the original American version.