107 Personal recovery suits us all and Belgium, covering more than 7.5 million inhabitants. Extensive assessment of genetic factors, environmental factors, (endo)phenotypes, and outcome variables were conducted. Participants Inclusion criteria were: aged 16 to 50 years; good command of the Dutch language; able and willing to give written informed consent. For patients an additional criterion was: a diagnosis of a non-affective psychotic disorder according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) criteria (21). For healthy controls additional criteria were: no lifetime psychotic disorder and no firstdegree family member with a lifetime psychotic disorder. For detailed information regarding recruitment and procedure we refer to Korver et al. (20). For the current study, we only used cross-sectional data assessed at 6-year follow-up (conducted between May 2011 and March 2014), because personal recovery, coping, core schemas and life events, were only measured at that time point. Procedure The assessments were administered by trained research assistants. If participants were unable to visit the institute, home assessments were being offered. The assessment of the questionnaires (containing different measurements) lasted on average four hours for patients and three hours for other participants. To account for fatigue effects, the four-hour assessment for patients was divided over two separate assessments of two hours each, within a week from each other. All participants provided informed consent and the GROUP study was approved by the Medical Ethical Committee (protocol number 04/003-O). Release 7.0 of the GROUP database was used for all analyses. Variables and instruments Personal recovery Personal recovery was evaluated with the Dutch version of the 24-item, self-report Recovery Assessment Scale (RAS) (22, 23). Items are scored on a 5-point Likert scale (1; strongly disagree, 5; strongly agree). The scale comprises of 5 subscales of personal recovery (confidence and hope, willingness to ask for help, goal and success, reliance on others and the degree to which a person is dominated by symptoms). Items include a variety of statements regarding life goals and purpose, hope, symptoms, asking for help, and general outlook and attitudes. Examples are: ‘I believe that I am capable of reaching my current personal goals’ and ‘I can handle what happens in my life’. Higher scores are an indication for greater recovery. Test-retest reliability for this instrument is satisfactory, as is evidence for internal consistency. Studies have also shown good evidence of validity (24, 25). In accordance with earlier studies, we use the mean total 6
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