Talking about Health: A Topic Analysis of Narratives from Individuals with Schizophrenia and Other Serious Mental Illnesses.

Individuals with schizophrenia have higher mortality and shorter lifespans. There are a multitude of factors which create these conditions, but one aspect is worse physical health, particularly cardiovascular and metabolic health. Many interventions to improve the health of individuals with schizophrenia have been created, but on the whole, there has been limited effectiveness in improving quality of life or lifespan.

Exploring the racial diagnostic bias of schizophrenia using behavioral and clinical-based measures.

There is evidence that African Americans are 2.4 times more likely to be diagnosed with a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis compared with White individuals, who are more likely to receive an affective diagnosis. The reason for these diagnostic discrepancies is unclear, however, 2 explanations have garnered attention: epigenetic differences and systematic error or bias in the diagnostic process.

Schizophrenia, narrative, and neurocognition: The utility of life-stories in understanding social problem-solving skills.

Objective: Schizophrenia researchers have focused on phenomenological aspects of the disorder to better understand its underlying nature. In particular, development of personal narratives-that is, the complexity with which people form, organize, and articulate their "life stories"-has recently been investigated in individuals with schizophrenia. However, less is known about how aspects of narrative relate to indicators of neurocognitive and social functioning.

Analyzing Confabulations in Schizophrenia and Healthy Participants.

Objectives: Confabulations occur in schizophrenia and certain severe neuropsychiatric conditions, and to a lesser degree in healthy individuals. The present study used a forced confabulation paradigm to assess differences in confabulation between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls.

Methods: Schizophrenia patients (n=60) and healthy control participants (n=19) were shown a video with missing segments, asked to fill in the gaps with speculations, and tested on their memory for the story.

Idea density in the life-stories of people with schizophrenia: Associations with narrative qualities and psychiatric symptoms.

Disordered speech and language deficits are well-documented in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Researchers often assess speech samples using manualized rating systems, though recently computerized language assessment methods have been used more frequently in the study of speech from people with schizophrenia. Most typically, these computerized assessments measure aspects of expressivity (i.

Vocal expression in schizophrenia: Less than meets the ear.

Abnormalities in nonverbal communication are a hallmark of schizophrenia. Results from studies using symptom rating scales suggest that these abnormalities are profound (i.e.

Comparative Study of Personality Trait Characteristics and Reactivity in Schizophrenia Using a Film Clip Paradigm.

The empirical examination of personality characteristics related to the experience of strong negative emotions and the associated physiological response may help account for idiosyncratic responses to life events in schizophrenia. The current study examines the relationship between levels of neuroticism and arousability and physiological and emotional reactivity during the viewing of film clips with differing emotional valance. Data were collected on emotional and cardiovascular and cortisol reactivity across experimental conditions for a sample of outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia and a comparison group of nonpsychiatric controls.

The relationship between stigma sentiments and self-identity of individuals with schizophrenia.

Objective: Stigma sentiments are the attitudes held toward a culturally devalued label or group. The present study measures schizophrenia stigma sentiments and self-identity to assess self-stigma experienced by people with schizophrenia.

Method: Ninety individuals with schizophrenia and 23 controls with no history of psychosis rated the evaluation, potency, and activity of "A person with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder," (stigma sentiments) and of "Myself as I really am" (self-identity).

Internal versus external auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia: symptom and course correlates.

Introduction: The auditory hallucinations associated with schizophrenia are phenomenologically diverse. "External" hallucinations classically have been considered to reflect more severe psychopathology than "internal" hallucinations, but empirical support has been equivocal.

Methods: We examined associations of "internal" versus "external" hallucinations with (1) other characteristics of the hallucinations, (2) severity of other symptoms and (3) course of illness variables, in a sample of 97 stable outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder who experienced auditory hallucinations.

Confabulations in schizophrenia.

Introduction: Current theories of confabulation are based primarily on the observation of neurological patients. The present paper evaluates these theories based on evidence from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is unique in that it presents with a pathophysiology which differs from that of other neuropsychiatric conditions, and yet the candidate's deficits that various theories of confabulation implicate are often simultaneously present in schizophrenia.

Stress reactivity of emotional and verbal speech content in schizophrenia.

Speech fundamental frequencies (SFFs) are nonverbal sound frequencies that convey emotion in speech. The degree of SFF long-term averaged spectra (LTAS) convergence between conversants reflects aspects of conversant-reported quality of the interaction (e.g.

Schizophrenia and the sense of self.

Sense of self (SOS)--understood as the foundation upon which individuals experience their daily lives--has been increasingly investigated in schizophrenia. A disrupted SOS is thought to represent a platform for the experience of psychiatric symptoms, social cognitive deficits, and other abnormalities of consciousness. Few studies, however, have investigated the specificity of disrupted SOS to schizophrenia.

Neurocognitive predictors of source monitoring in schizophrenia.

Rationale: Source monitoring (SM) is a metacognitive process involved in making judgments about the origin of information by recruiting cognitive processes. Deficits in SM have been linked to positive symptoms of schizophrenia. We investigated whether certain neurocognitive functions - specifically attention, working memory, and organizational sequencing - were associated with SM in a sample of schizophrenia patients.

Effects of social cognitive impairment on speech disorder in schizophrenia.

Disordered speech in schizophrenia impairs social functioning because it impedes communication with others. Treatment approaches targeting this symptom have been limited by an incomplete understanding of its causes. This study examined the process underpinnings of speech disorder, assessed in terms of communication failure.

Predicting social functioning in schizotypy: an investigation of the relative contributions of theory of mind and mood.

Theory of mind (ToM) is an aspect of social cognition that refers to the ability to make inferences about the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of other people. It is believed to be related to social functioning. Previous investigations of ToM in schizotypy have yielded mixed results.

Missing referents, psychotic symptoms, and discriminating the internal from the externalized.

The communicative efficacy of the speech of schizophrenia patients is compromised by the presence of references for which there are no referents. There is evidence that this kind of error is positively associated with the genetic substrate of schizophrenia. The present study was an effort to identify a cognitive process source of these errors by looking at their association with performance on an internal source memory task assessing the ability to remember what one has said out loud versus only thought.

On identifying the processes underlying schizophrenic speech disorder.

Speech of people with schizophrenia is often difficult to follow. There is evidence that neuropsychological deficits associated with schizophrenia explain some of the variance in speech disorder, but its nature and causes overall are not well understood. This study rated speech samples from 60 schizophrenic outpatients for thought disorder, conceptual disorganization, linguistic structural breakdown, and communication failure.

Schizotypy, alexithymia, and socioemotional outcomes.

Studies have found higher levels of alexithymia in schizophrenic subjects relative to controls, with an overall higher level of emotional arousal and social withdrawal. The present study is an extension of this research to the assessment of schizotypy in a nonclinical sample. Seventy-two undergraduate students (40 female; 21.

Reality monitoring and its association with social functioning in schizophrenia.

Reality monitoring, or the ability to discriminate internal from external information present in short-term memory, is relevant in the study of schizophrenia. Previous research has linked monitoring impairments with psychotic symptoms and certain forms of communication disturbance. The focus of the present study was to test the hypothesis that there would be specific relationships between reality monitoring in patients with schizophrenia and current and pre-morbid social functioning, beyond the effects of general verbal ability.

Anxiety interacts with expressed emotion criticism in the prediction of psychotic symptom exacerbation.

Psychotic symptoms are exacerbated by social stressors in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder patients as a group. More specifically, critical attitudes toward patients on the part of family members and others have been associated with a higher risk of relapse in the patients. Some patients appear to be especially vulnerable in this regard.

Cognitive impairments, emotion, stress, and language in schizophrenia.

Language symptoms in schizophrenia are exacerbated by arousal of negative affect; the extent of this effect varies widely among patients. The present study assessed predictors of affective speech reactivity. Based on earlier research, it was expected that speech reactivity would be predicted by a combination of neurocognitive and emotional variables.

Referential failures and affective reactivity of language in schizophrenia and unipolar depression.

Reference failures, and their increase in affectively negative conditions (known as affective reactivity of speech), are more frequently observed in schizophrenia patients than in normal controls, but no information is available comparing schizophrenia with depression, ie, a mental disorder closely linked to the concept of affective reactivity. To address this gap in the literature, the present study compared 24 schizophrenia inpatients, 21 unipolar depression inpatients and 21 normal controls. Two 10-minute conversational speech samples (1 on negative and 1 on positive memories) were collected from each patient.

Attribution biases in schizophrenia: relationship to clinical and functional impairments.

Background: Patients with schizophrenia exhibit impairment in their ability to accurately recognize facial emotions in others, and the severity of this emotion perception deficit has been associated with poorer functioning. However, the mechanisms underlying facial emotion perception deficits are poorly understood. There is evidence to suggest that patients, particularly those with certain positive symptoms, may misinterpret other people's facial expressions as having an overly negative valence.

Life events and high-trait reactivity together predict psychotic symptom increases in schizophrenia.

Psychotic symptoms are exacerbated by stressful life events in schizophrenia patients as a group. Some individuals appear to be more vulnerable than others in this regard. This study tested whether schizophrenia patients are highly emotionally reactive compared with controls and whether the level of trait emotional reactivity in patients influences the degree to which they respond to life stressors with exacerbations of psychosis.