Journal
SCHIZOPHRENIA RESEARCH
Volume 150, Issue 1, Pages 217-222Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2013.07.025
Keywords
Insight; Cognition; Schizophrenia; Aging; Illness awareness
Categories
Funding
- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
- Ontario Mental Health Foundation
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research
- US National Institute of Health (NIH)
- Bristol-Myers Squibb
- NIH
- Pfizer
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health
- Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Technologia
- Janssen (Johnson Johnson)
- American Psychiatric Association
- Foundation of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
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Impaired insight into illness is a common but poorly understood phenomenon in schizophrenia. Several studies in midlife adults with schizophrenia have reported an association between impaired insight and illness severity, executive dysfunction, premorbid intellectual function, and to a lesser degree attention. Aging is associated with a decline in attention and executive function. Thus, the relationship between cognition and insight is expected to differ between younger and older adults with schizophrenia. This study assessed this relationship among 50 patients with schizophrenia 60 years and older. Insight was explained by illness severity (16.2% of the variance) and premorbid intellectual function (23.9% of the variance), but not by attention or executive function. Our findings suggest that the predictors of insight in schizophrenia differ early and later in life. In particular, insight's association with attention and executive function observed in younger patients is attenuated by age-related changes in cognition. In contrast, premorbid intellectual function continues to be a strong predictor of insight in late life, which highlights the need to better understand and enhance cognitive function early in the course of schizophrenia. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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