Positive and negative symptom pattern in schizophrenia

Abstract EN

The present study aimed to identify the positive and negative symptoms of patients with schizophrenia as well as estimate their correlations with each other and with patients’ basic demographic data.

Methods: A crosssectional study assessed both positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia in N=136 patients with the diagnoses.

It was conducted from April to December 2015 at three mental health hospitals in the Sulaimani and Erbil provinces of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) was used and diagnosis of schizophrenia was via ICD-10 checklist.

Results: Negative symptoms were more evident, with a mean difference of 7.243 points on PANSS, than positive symptoms.

Delusions and hallucinations were evident in 43% and 46% of the studied population, respectively.

Demographic data, except education, were not significant indicators for schizophrenia symptomatology.

It was apparent that improved education was associated with a beta weights of almost 0.3 reduction (p = 0.001) in negative symptoms.

On correlation matrices of all symptom categories, positive symptoms leaned towards co-occurrences with each other.

The same was apparent for the negative symptoms.

Conclusion: Symptoms appeared on a continuum with significant correlations to each other.

However, negative symptoms appeared to be prevailing and, of all demographic variables surveyed, only education tended to affect the occurrences of these symptoms.