Negative symptoms in drug-naive patients with a first-episode psychosis (FEP).

INTRODUCTION: Negative symptoms are nuclear features of schizophrenia that may be present from the onset of the disease. In recent years, it has been described 2 subdomains of negative symptoms: experiential and expressive deficits. The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between negative symptoms and demographic and clinical variables in patients with first-episode psychosis. Also, to explore whether there are differences in the association among these variables and negative symptoms when divided into both subdomains. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was performed in 160 patients (52 females and 108 males) with a diagnosis of a first episode psychosis. A questionnaire was administered to collect demographic and clinical variables. RESULTS: A backward stepwise linear regressions analysis was performed in order to observe potential associations between demographic and clinical variables and the presence of negative symptoms. All three models are predicted by worse PSP score, a higher CDSS, a higher disorganized factor score and a lower excited factor score. A longer duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) is associated to a higher score in the experiential deficit subdomain only. CONCLUSIONS: Our work highlights some clinical and phenomenological differences between experiential and expressive deficits. We think that taking into account both subdomains in future studies may lead to more accurate clinical assessment and interventions.

Prevalence and types of childhood trauma in first episode psychosis patients. Relation with clinical onset variables.

OBJECTIVE: To study the prevalence and the type of childhood trauma (CT) in a first-episode psychosis (FEP) cohort and in a healthy control (HC) sample. To study which clinical and sociodemographic variables in the onset of the FEP are related to having suffered some traumatic experience in childhood. METHOD: 100 FEP patients and 94 HC participated in the study. The Childhood Traumatic Questionnaire (CTQ) was used to evaluate CT. The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), the Personal and Social Performance (PSP), the Suicide Risk Scale of Plutchik (SRSP), and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) were also administered. RESULTS: 61% of FEP patients and 17% of HC reported having experienced some kind of CT. FEP showed more CT than controls in all subscales, except in sexual abuse. The most frequent CT was emotional abuse. For the FEP group, younger age, more years of education, have a first-degree family history, more positive and negative symptoms, more perceived stress and more personal and social functioning were the variables more influenced by having suffered some kind of CT. CONCLUSIONS: There is a high prevalence of CT in FEP patients. Having a first-degree family history of mental illness, more positive symptoms, and more perception of stress at the time of hospital admission were related to having suffered CT. More research is needed to find out the best way to detect CT and its role in psychosis to be able to implement interventions to improve the evolution of these patients.

Social cognition and its relationship with sociodemographic, clinical, and psychosocial variables in first-episode psychosis.

People with first episode of psychosis (FEP) show deficits in social cognition, which have been linked to several sociodemographic, clinical, and psychosocial variables. The aim of the present research was to study social cognition as a whole measure in people with FEP comparing it with a healthy control sample, to study gender differences, and to examine the relationship between sociodemographic, clinical, and psychosocial variables and social cognition in the onset of psychosis. A descriptive, cross-sectional study was performed. The study sample consisted of 63 people (18 females; 45 males) with a diagnosis of FEP and a healthy control group (78 participants: 38 females; 40 males). All the participants were assessed with the social cognitive domain of the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) and several questionnaires related to studied variables. Our results indicated that compared with healthy controls, people with FEP showed social cognition deficits. Furthermore, premorbid IQ was the most relevant variable in social cognition performance in FEP sample. The findings of the present research may be taken into account in clinical practice to improve the intervention with people with FEP.