Theory of mind deficits in symptom remittent schizophrenia: a state or a trait?

This study aimed to compare ToM impairments among symptom remittent patients with first-episode schizophrenia, their unaffected biological full siblings, and controls and also determine whether there is any association between clinical profile of schizophrenic patients and components of ToM abilities. Patients and methods: The study included 50 male patients with symptom remittent first-episode schizophrenia, 50 biological unaffected full siblings, and 50 healthy individuals. The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) consists of a series of videotaped vignettes that are designed to measure social perception abilities and assess the detection of sarcasm, an important component of ToM. Results: Compared with controls, patients with symptom remittent first-episode schizophrenia and their biological unaffected full siblings performed poorer on TASIT components (P=0.001), with siblings having intermediate performance between patients and controls. We found a significant correlation between severity of negative symptom score, duration of hospitalization at index episode, and poor TASIT performance in the schizophrenic patient group (P
Source: Middle East Current Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Original articles Source Type: research