Subjective experience and related symptoms in schizophrenia.

We had previously extracted two types of subjective experience of schizophrenia (SES); first, a feeling of inadequacy in stream of speech, thought, and action, associated with a distorted sense of self, and second, a feeling that excessive thoughts are filling and sticking to one's head, causing negative affective burden such as misery and oppression. This study tried to validate their content using conventional symptom clusters as external validators. Subjects were 63 patients from two hospitals in Tokyo meeting ICD-10 criteria for schizophrenia. Positive, negative, and depressive psychopathology were measured by the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Scale for the Assessment of the Negative Symptoms (SANS), and Hamilton's Depression Scale (HDS). The two types of SES were measured by an original scale. The first type of SES correlated significantly with the negative symptoms of alogia, avolition, and attention, whereas the second correlated with positive and depressive symptoms. To analyze how schizophrenia is experienced by patients, qualitative and comprehensive descriptions, such as indicated by our subjective factors, will be useful.