Abstract
The purpose of this study was to describe subjective experiences of patients with schizophrenia who had known their own illness. We conducted semi-structured interviews with six outpatients in a university hospital. The data were analyzed qualitatively with the following five viewpoints: 1) how they knew their illness, 2) how they felt about their illness, 3) how they coped with the feelings, 4) what they talked about with the family members, and 5) what they wanted nurses to do. Our study indicated that schizophrenia patients experienced a variety of feelings and took their own coping strategies after their knowing the illness. Schizophrenia was renamed at 2002 from "Seishin Bunretsu Byo" to "Togo Shitcho Sho" in Japan in order to reduce the stigma. Nevertheless, most of the patients did not want to disclose their illness at the study point. These results suggest that nurses should understand the patients' surroundings and their own coping strategies and that the nursing practice should be adjusted to levels of their acceptance of the illness.
