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Affective States in Schizophrenia
Author(s) -
PRIEST R. G.,
SHARIATMADARI M. E.,
TARIGHATI SH.
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
british journal of social and clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0007-1293
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1973.tb00069.x
Subject(s) - pathological , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , psychology , psychiatry , anxiety , scale for the assessment of negative symptoms , clinical psychology , psychosis , medicine , negative symptom
The hypothesis was tested that acute schizophrenics are more likely to show affective symptomatology than chronic schizophrenics. The Personal Illness (PI) and Personal Disturbance (PD) scales of the Symptom‐Sign Inventory were administered to 50 schizophrenic patients. On the PI Scale 56 per cent of acute schizophrenics and 28 per cent of chronic schizophrenics obtained pathological scores. On the PD Scale, depending on the cut‐off point selected, 64–88 per cent of acutes, and 28–56 per cent of chronics obtained pathological scores. In the case of acute schizophrenia, although the proportions of positive response are not as high as in Foulds' criterion sample (1965), it is confirmed that a high percentage of patients obtain pathological scores on the PI Scale, indicating the presence of prima facie anxiety and depressive symptoms. Relatively high numbers of chronic schizophrenics also obtained elevated scores, but it is argued that this does not exclude the possibility of affective blunting or flattening. The PD scores showed high correlations with the PI scores, not altogether due to their having certain questions in common. The PD Scale showed fewer false negatives than the PI Scale on this schizophrenic population, and discriminated more sharply between the acute and chronic populations. It is concluded that although affective symptoms are more common in acute than in chronic schizophrenics, an appreciable proportion of the latter do have them, and in this sense may be said to suffer from their illness.