Idiosyncratic thinking and personally overinvolved thinking in schizophrenic patients during partial recovery

Abstract

The present research investigated the importance of idiosyncratic thinking and personally overinvolved thinking in schizophrenia and evaluated changes in these factors over two phases of the disorder (the acute phase and the phase of partial recovery). Five indexes of thinking derived from two tests were administered to 25 acute schizophrenic patients, 23 borderline patients, and 47 nonschizophrenic psychiatric patients at week one and week eight of hospitalization. Schizophrenic patients evidenced a significantly higher level of idiosyncratic thinking than nonschizophrenic patients at the acute phase ( p < 0.001). As patients emerged from the acute phase, schizophrenics still tended to score higher on idiosyncratic thinking than nonschizophrenics. However, the differences had diminished considerably and on some indexes were no longer significant. In addition, all patients manifested less idiosyncratic thinking as the acute phase diminished, with this decrease being especially prominent among the schizophrenic group. This suggests that some aspects of disordered schizophrenic thinking are at least in part a function of the acute or active phase. There were no significant differences between the schizophrenic and non-schizophrenic patients in the level of personally overinvolved thinking at either time period. Although exhibiting less personally overinvolved thinking after the acute period, most of these hospitalized patients still showed a moderate amount of personalizing even during partial recovery. The results suggest that idiosyncratic thinking is an important characteristic of the acute schizophrenic thought disorder and is a useful parameter in differentiating acute schizophrenics from acute nonschizophrenics.