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Achievement motivation in early schizophrenia: Relationship with symptoms, cognition and functional outcome
Author(s) -
Fervaha Gagan,
Takeuchi Hiroyoshi,
Foussias George,
Hahn Margaret K.,
Agid Ofer,
Remington Gary
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
early intervention in psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.087
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1751-7893
pISSN - 1751-7885
DOI - 10.1111/eip.12405
Subject(s) - psychology , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , amotivation , cognition , clinical psychology , population , trait , psychiatry , developmental psychology , intrinsic motivation , medicine , social psychology , environmental health , computer science , programming language
Background Individuals with schizophrenia engage in goal‐directed activities significantly less often compared to healthy individuals in the community. There is ample evidence documenting the presence of motivational deficits in schizophrenia using observer‐based ratings; however, purely self‐reported accounts of patients’ motivation are less well understood. This study examined subjective accounts of trait achievement motivation among relatively young, clinically stable, early‐course outpatients with schizophrenia. Methods Thirty‐nine early‐course patients and 39 healthy comparison subjects completed clinical and cognitive assessments in addition to a self‐report inventory measuring achievement motivation. Results Patients were found to endorse significantly lower levels of motivation, a mean difference which translated to a large effect size (Cohen's d = 1.1). Patients’ self‐reported motivation was significantly related to clinician ratings of motivational deficits which were based on behavioural output, and to vocational functioning. Within the patient sample, 33.3% of individuals were found to experience prominent or clinically significant levels of amotivation based on patients’ own self‐report. Self‐reported achievement motivation was not associated with other clinical variables such as positive symptom severity or expressive negative symptoms. Conclusions Our results serve to highlight the occurrence and prevalence of motivational deficits in patients with schizophrenia who are in the early stages of their illness. Subjective accounts of motivation in this population were found to be related to important outcomes such as community functioning, highlighting the importance of this domain of illness. Targeting these deficits early in the course of the illness offers the potential to curb potential prospective poor outcomes and sets the stage for recovery.