30 APPLICATION OF FAMILY EDUCATION SOCIOLOGY IN THE ASSESSMENT OF SOCIAL THINKING DISORDERS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA PATIENTS

Abstract Background Schizophrenia patients often have significant social thinking disorders, manifested as significantly limited ability to understand the intentions, emotions, and social rules of others, which seriously affects the patient’s social function recovery. Sociology of family education has gradually been introduced into the field of mental illness intervention, emphasizing the improvement of patients’ social thinking and behavioral abilities through family interaction and educational models. Methods The study aims to explore the application effect of sociological methods of family education in the assessment of social thinking disorders in patients with schizophrenia, in order to provide innovative tools for clinical evaluation and guide the optimization of intervention measures. The study recruited 80 patients and their primary family caregivers who met the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia. They were randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group, with 40 patients and caregivers in each group. On the basis of receiving routine psychiatric treatment, the experimental group participated in a 3-month family education intervention course, which included optimizing family interaction patterns, training social thinking, and simulating social situations; The control group only received routine psychiatric treatment. Before and after intervention, the Social Cognition Assessment Scale (SCAS) was used to assess patients’ social thinking abilities, including three dimensions: emotion recognition, social reasoning, and intention understanding. At the same time, the Family Education Quality Questionnaire (FEQQ) was used to evaluate the implementation effect of family education interventions. Statistical analysis uses paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test. Results The total score of the SCAS for the experimental group patients significantly increased from 45.3±5.6 to 60.8±6.2 after intervention (P<0.01), while the control group only slightly increased from 44.8±5.4 to 46.2±5.8, with no statistically significant difference (P>0.05). In the core dimensions, the emotional recognition score of the experimental group patients increased from 14.2±2.1 to 19.1±2.4 (P<0.01), social reasoning increased from 16.3±3.2 to 22.5±3.5 (P<0.01), and intention understanding increased from 14.8±2.3 to 19.2±2.7 (P<0.01). The improvement of the control group in these dimensions was relatively small and not statistically significant (P>0.05). The results of the FEQQ showed that the experimental group had a pre-intervention score of 32.4±4.5, which significantly increased to 46.7±5.3 after intervention (P<0.01), while the control group only slightly increased from 33.0±4.2 to 33.8±4.6 (P>0.05). The experimental results showed that sociological intervention in family education significantly improved patients’ social thinking ability and the quality of family education, providing effective support for the social function recovery of schizophrenia patients. Discussion The research results indicate that methods based on family education sociology have significant effects in improving social thinking disorders in patients with schizophrenia, especially in key abilities such as emotion recognition and social reasoning. In addition, the improvement of the quality of family education significantly enhances the supportive role of caregivers in the rehabilitation of patients, providing important references for the comprehensive assessment and intervention of social thinking disorders. In future clinical work, personalized family education programs can be combined to further optimize the social function recovery path of patients with schizophrenia. Funding No. 22JDSZ3017; No. 23ZYJ0206.