THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITIVE DEFICITS AND CLINICAL CHARACTERISTICS IN PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Introduction: Schizophrenia is an endogenous psychotic disorder with a chronic course, which is characterized by dysfunction in multiple domains: perceptions, thinking, emotions, and cognition. Objective: The main aim of the study was to introduce the relationship between clinical characteristics and cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia. Methods: The research involved 53 randomly selected male and female respondents from 18 to 60 years of age, who suffer from schizophrenia according to the diagnostic criteria of the International Classification of Diseases – ICD 10, acute schizophrenia treated in the Psychiatric Hospital Skopje - Skopje. We used the following measuring instruments: the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the Schizophrenia Cognition Rating Scale (SCoRS). Results: The results indicated that the acute schizophrenic patients had higher rating scores in the SCoRS assessment (M=45.736, SD=8.908) in the first week after psychosis onset. A high degree of positive and negative symptoms was a strong predictor of higher cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia. A positive relationship was observed between the PANSS-Positive and ScoRS level (F (53) =0.559, sig. =.001, p<.01). At the same time, positive relationship was observed between the PANSS-Negative and ScoRS level (F (53) =0.283 sig. =.001, p<.01). Conclusions: In the course of our longitudinal prospective study, we found that clinical characteristics of schizophrenia had a great impact on the cognitive dysfunction, whereby this is evident in the acute stage of the disease.