Awareness of illness and outcome in schizophrenia

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether awareness of illness affects specific measures of outcome in schizophrenia. Patient awareness was evaluated using a shortened version of the Scale to Assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder (SUMD). Patient outcome was assessed by means of the Strauss-Carpenter scale. Our findings indicate that lack of awareness of “negative symptoms” has a considerable impact on outcome: in fact “Social Contacts” highly correlated with Blunt Affect, Anhedonia and Asociality items on the SUMD. Lack of awareness seems then to be a powerful predictor of poor outcome.