Open AccessDelusions in Individuals with Schizophrenia: Factor Structure, Clinical Correlates, and Putative Neurobiology
Author(s) -
David Kimhy,
Ray Goetz,
Scott Yale,
Cheryl Corcoran,
Dolores Malaspina
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
psychopathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1423-033X
pISSN - 0254-4962
DOI - 10.1159/000089455
Subject(s) - psychology , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , psychosis , delusion , clinical psychology , psychiatry , developmental psychology , psychotherapist , cognitive psychology , neuroscience
Delusions are a central feature of schizophrenia, yet our understanding of their neurobiology is limited. Attempt to link dimensions of psychopathology to putative neurobiological mechanisms depends on careful delineation of symptoms. Previous factor analytic studies of delusions in schizophrenia were limited by several methodological problems, including the use of patients medicated with antipsychotics, inclusion of nondelusion symptoms in the analyses, and/or inclusion of patients with psychotic disorders other than schizophrenia. These problems may have possibly biased the resulting factor structure and contributed to the inconclusive findings regarding the neurobiology of positive symptoms. Our goal is to examine the factor structure of delusions in antipsychotic-free individuals with diagnoses of schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder.