Independent effect of paliperidone extended release on social functioning beyond its effect on positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia: a mediation analysis.

摘要

Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic, debilitating mental illness affecting up to 1% of the population worldwide. It is characterized by a range of symptoms, including positive and negative symptoms and neuro-cognitive deficits, and is often characterized by periods of relative stability and recurrences of symptoms. Even during periods of relative stability, it is unusual for patients to fully recover from social functioning deficits. The inability of patients to competently perform activities of daily living, attend to personal hygiene, maintain social relationships, and work or live independently results in significant financial and social costs to society, their families, and caregivers.3 Finding treatments to improve social functioning is important, and in research, measurement of social functioning improvements is challenging. Positive and negative symptom control can be associated with improvement in various aspects of social functioning and is a challenge to differentiate how much of the improvement is due to the nonspecific improvement in positive and negative symptoms and how much is an independent effect on social functioning.Although both symptom control and social functioning can improve with treatment, not all treatment-related improvements in social functioning need to be attributed to symptom improvement.