Personality dimensions in schizophrenia: associations with symptoms and coping.

While individual differences in personality exist among persons with schizophrenia and predate the onset of illness, less is known about their relationship to outcome. This study examined whether levels of three personality dimensions-neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness-are associated with symptomatology and coping in persons with schizophrenia. Symptom, personality, and coping measures were obtained for 59 participants with schizophrenia.

Patterns of neurocognitive deficits and unawareness of illness in schizophrenia.

It has been alternately theorized that poor insight in patients with schizophrenia results from deficits in executive function and a preference for denial as a coping strategy. One possibility is there are two distinct groups of persons with poor insight: those with impairments in executive function and those with a generally avoidant coping style. To examine this question, the authors performed a cluster analysis on 64 persons with schizophrenia spectrum disorders on the basis of the PANSS insight and judgment item and executive function assessed with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.

Insight and personal narratives of illness in schizophrenia.

Insight in schizophrenia tends to be assessed as the degree to which one possesses specific knowledge. It therefore often fails to account for the fact that awareness of illness is an inextricable part of a personal narrative and may be incoherent or incomplete for many different narrative reasons. Accordingly, we have developed a means of eliciting narratives of illness: the Indiana Psychiatric Illness Interview, and a method for rating the coherence of those narratives: the Narrative Coherence Rating Scale.

Neurocognitive and psychosocial correlates of hostility among persons in a post-acute phase of schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Persons with schizophrenia often have difficulty inhibiting hostile behaviors. While the correlates of hostility have been extensively explored in controlled settings, less is known about hostile behaviors and attitudes among outpatients who are in a post-acute phase of illness. Accordingly, this study examined the relationship of self-reported hostile behaviors and attitudes with measures of neurocognition, childhood physical abuse and hopelessness among 36 individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.