Duration of untreated psychosis and social function: 1-year follow-up study of first-episode schizophrenia.

Background: In first-episode schizophrenia, longer duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) predicts poorer outcomes.

Aims: To address whether the relationship between DUP and outcome is a direct causal one or the result of association between symptoms and/or cognitive functioning and social functioning at the same time point.

Method: Symptoms, social function and cognitive function were assessed in 98 patients with first-episode schizphrenia at presentation and 1 year later.

The relationship between IQ, memory, executive function, and processing speed in recent-onset psychosis: 1-year stability and clinical outcome.

Studies commonly report poor performance in psychotic patients compared with controls on tasks testing a range of cognitive functions, but, because current IQ is often not matched between these groups, it is difficult to determine whether this represents a generalized deficit or specific abnormalities. Fifty-three first-episode psychosis patients and 53 healthy controls, one-to-one matched for sex, age, and full-scale current IQ, were compared on Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) subtests representing indices of perceptual organization, verbal comprehension, processing speed, and working memory as well as other tests of executive function and episodic memory. The groups showed an equivalent pattern of performance on all WAIS subtests except digit symbol processing speed, on which the patients were significantly worse.

Gaze strategies during planning in first-episode psychosis.

Eye movements were measured during the performance of a computerized Tower of London task to specify the source of planning abnormalities in patients with 1st-episode schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Subjects viewed 2 arrays of colored balls in the upper and lower parts of the screen. They were asked to plan the shortest sequence of moves required to rearrange the balls in the lower screen to match the upper arrangement.

Relationship between insight, cognitive function, social function and symptomatology in schizophrenia: the West London first episode study.

Objective: To examine the nature and clinical correlates of insight in first-episode schizophrenia, and how these differ from findings in established schizophrenia.

Method: Insight (and insight dimensions), clinical symptoms, neurocognitive function and social function were assessed in 94 patients with first-episode schizophrenia or schizophreniform disorder according to DSM-IV criteria.

Results: Greater global insight was associated with more severe depression.

Comorbid substance use and age at onset of schizophrenia.

Background: Substance use may be a risk factor for the onset of schizophrenia.

Aims: To examine the association between substance use and age at onset in substance use and age at onset in a UK, inner-city sample of people with recent-onset schizophrenia.

Method: The study sample consisted of 152 people recruited to the West London First-Episode Schizophrenia Study.

Cognitive heterogeneity in first-episode schizophrenia.

Background: Studies of chronic schizophrenia suggest that there are subgroups with different profiles of cognitive impairment.

Aims: To determine whether such heterogeneity is present at illness onset and any relationship to clinical variables.

Method: Ninety-three community patients with first-episode schizophrenia and 50 healthy volunteers were assessed for premorbid (Revised National Adult Reading Test) and current IQ, memory and executive function.

Structural neural networks subserving oculomotor function in first-episode schizophrenia.

Background: Smooth pursuit and antisaccade abnormalities are well documented in schizophrenia, but their neuropathological correlates remain unclear.

Methods: In this study, we used statistical parametric mapping to investigate the relationship between oculomotor abnormalities and brain structure in a sample of first-episode schizophrenia patients (n = 27). In addition to conventional volumetric magnetic resonance imaging, we also used magnetization transfer ratio, a technique that allows more precise tissue characterization.