Network Analysis of the Brief ICF Core Set for Schizophrenia

Laura Nuño; Georgina Guilera; Maite Barrios; Juana Gómez-Benito; Gomaa Said Mohamed Abdelhamid

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2022.852132

Network Analysis of the Brief ICF Core Set for Schizophrenia

Front Psychiatry. 2022 Jun 17:13:852132. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.852132. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Laura Nuño¹, Georgina Guilera^{2

3}, Maite Barrios^{2

3}, Juana Gómez-Benito^{2

3}, Gomaa Said Mohamed Abdelhamid⁴

Affiliations

¹ Addictions Unit, Clinical Institute of Neuroscience (ICN), Hospital Clinic, Barcelona, Spain.
² Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
³ Group on Measurement Invariance and Analysis of Change (GEIMAC), Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
⁴ Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, Fayoum University, Fayoum, Egypt.

Abstract

Background: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health Core Sets (ICF-CSs) for schizophrenia are a set of categories for assessing functioning in persons with this health condition. This study aimed to: a) estimate the network structure of the Brief ICF-CS for schizophrenia, b) examine the community structure (categories strongly clustered together) underlying this network, and c) identify the most central categories within this network.

Methods: A total of 638 health professionals from different backgrounds and with a significant role in the treatment of individuals with schizophrenia participated in a series of Delphi studies. Based on their responses we used the Ising model to estimate the network structure of the 25-category Brief ICF-CS, and then estimated the degree of centrality for all categories. Finally, the community structure was detected using the walktrap algorithm.

Results: The resulting network revealed strong associations between individual categories within components of the ICF (i.e., Body functions, Activities and participation, and Environmental factors). The results also showed three distinct clusters of categories corresponding to the same three components. The categories e410 Individual attitudes of immediate family members, e450 Individual attitudes of health professionals, d910 Community life, and d175 Solving problems were among the most central categories in the Brief ICF-CS network.

Conclusion: These results demonstrate the utility of a network approach for estimating the structure of the ICF-CSs. Implications of these results for clinical interventions and development of new instruments are discussed.

Keywords: Delphi method; ICF core set; functioning; network analysis; schizophrenia.