The possibilities of the psychosemantic method in the study of social anhedonia in patients with schizophrenia

The results of a study of social anhedonia in patients with schizophrenia are presented. The subject of the study is social anhedonia in patients with schizophrenia. The purpose of the work: to conduct a theoretical analysis of the possibilities of the psychosemantic approach and to present empirical data on the features of the subjective semantic structure of social experience in patients with schizophrenia, its links with the severity of social anhedonia and the characteristics of social motivation. It clarifies that patients with schizophrenia with pronounced social anhedonia show active social avoidance, instead of the expected indifference. Special attention is paid to the psychosemantic approach, which makes it possible to describe the structure of subjective semantic coordinates of social experience in patients with schizophrenia and to identify its relationship with motivation for social avoidance. The study involved 42 patients aged 23 to 46 years (mean age = 34.8 years, SD = 7.4) with a diagnosis of "F20.0 paranoid schizophrenia" with more than 5 years of illness, in a state of subremission, without pronounced psychotic symptoms. Adapted methods "Scale of social anhedonia" (Eckblad et al., 1982), "Scale of social avoidance and distress" (D. Watson, R. Friend, 1969), "A brief scale of fear of negative social assessment" (M. Leary, 1983), "The Toronto scale of alexithymia" (G. Taylor, J. Parker, R. Bagby, 1994); SPSS Statistics program ver.22. It has been revealed that social anhedonia in patients with schizophrenia is associated with the peculiarities of the subjective semantic structure of social experience; patients with schizophrenia, regardless of the available characteristics and context, characterize others as evil and malevolent, which leads them to the inability to enjoy social interaction; these features mediate motivation for social avoidance, and also prevent the acquisition of emotional experience from an actual situation of social interaction. The novelty of the results lies in the application of a psychosemantic method, namely a directed associative experiment, in which subjects were consistently presented with images representing photographs of the eyes of professional actors expressing various emotional states. The results obtained complement previous studies in the field of social motivation of patients with schizophrenia. Scope of the results: development and implementation of psychocorrective and psychotherapeutic programs.