Abstract
Background: Schizophrenia has a broad range of interrelated symptoms and impairment in functioning. The objective of the study was to explore the interplay between positive symptoms, negative symptoms, neurocognition, social cognition and functional outcome in patients with schizophrenia using network analysis. Methods: Participants were 64 clinically stable patients with schizophrenia. Psychopathologic, neurocognition, social cognition, and functional outcome were measured using the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms, Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms, Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination III, Faces test, Reading the Mind in the Eyes test,and Personal Social Performance scale. Results: The network analysis suggested that functional outcome was the most central in the network followed by avolition and asociality. Functioning was directly connected to avolition, asociality, blunted affect, neurocognition and emotion recognition. The positive symptoms were the most remote and therefore the least important node. Conclusion: The high centrality of functioning suggests the need for improving of everyday life skills for patients with schizophrenia. Moreover, treatment of specific negative symptoms, neurocognition and emotion recognition could also enhance functional outcome.
Highlights
Schizophrenia is associated with a broad range of symptoms including positive symptoms, negative symptoms and neurocognition impairments
While all of the symptoms are believed to effect functional outcome to some extent, negative symptoms, neurocognitive, and social cognition seem to have the highest impact on functioning.[4]
The aim of this study was to explore the interplay of positive symptoms, five groups of negative symptoms, neurocognition, two forms of social cognition, and functioning in patients with clinically stable schizophrenia using network analysis
Summary
Schizophrenia is associated with a broad range of symptoms including positive symptoms, negative symptoms and neurocognition impairments. Since can negative symptoms, neurocognition, and social cognition predict functional outcome, all of these symptoms are interrelated to each other. Previous studies demonstrated that negative symptoms were closely associated with social cognition.[5,6]. Network analysis is a relatively new and powerful methodological approach to investigate complex relationship patterns. It is a data-driven technique that does not require a priori assumption of relationships among variables. The aim of this study was to explore the interplay of positive symptoms, five groups of negative symptoms, neurocognition, two forms of social cognition (theory of mind, emotion recognition), and functioning in patients with clinically stable schizophrenia using network analysis
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