Addington, Penn, woods, Addington, and Perkins (2008).
Schizophrenia is characterized by a poor social function, and in their work Addington, Penn, woods, Addington, and Perkins (2008) attempts to examine the social function among psychosis patients. There is an indication, however, that the deficits in social functioning present themselves earlier even before the first episode of psychosis. The study mainly focuses on persons at CHR (high clinical risk) of developing psychosis that is those in the prodromal stage of the disease. There is a relationship between deteriorated functioning and the onset of psychosis and the article equally highlights that CHR persons also depict considerably impaired social skills. To ascertain the level of social functioning among psychotic individuals, the study applied the well-established and designed method used in measuring the social functioning in schizophrenia. The study entailed examining the population sample’s interpersonal communication, social engagement, withdrawal, and independence-performance. The authors ‘work is the first study to explore the social functioning among CHR patients in comparison to non-psychiatric controls. The research indicates that young individuals who are clinically at high risk of developing psychosis have evident deficits in social functioning comparable to schizophrenia patients. The patients diagnosed with social functioning demonstrated poor interpersonal communication and withdrawal that is typical with psychotic patients. Further, the study highlights that the individuals exhibited some impairment in their competency and performance. That is the patients on the onset of the prodromal stage had difficulties in initiating social interactions compared to non-psychiatric peers. When such characteristics start to set in it is high time that the individual should seek medical assistance as it begins to affect the relationship with others, work, and even social functioning. Important to note is that the symptoms do not always point out that the individual s psychotic, instead they could be an indication of another psychosocial disorder. According to the study, CHR subjects should seek medical intervention that is relatively inexpensive at that stage as well as to prevent the occurrence of a long-term condition. In most cases, untreated symptoms of CHR develop to the full blown psychotic illness and social functioning similar to schizophrenia. Psychological intervention is critical at the initial stages as it could potentially improve the outcome and course of the disease. Further, for those with more advanced symptoms, treatment is equally much needed to reduce distress and improve the quality of their lives. The therapy assists the patients to develop on their social functions such as poor interpersonal communication and withdrawal.
Green, et al. (2012) study highlights the relationship between social cognitive impairments and schizophrenia and further researches on the associated functional outcome. In schizophrenia, cognitive factors can be divided into two, social cognition and non-social neuro-cognition. Notably, the majority of the researches have focused on the neurocognition aspect in schizophrenia that includes memory, learning, the speed of processing attention, problem-solving, and working memory. On the other hand, social cognition references to the mental operations that touch on social interactions such as managing, interpreting, perception, and generating responses to behaviours and socially relevant stimuli. Social cognition is undoubtedly essential as it provides insights into the development and impact of functional disability among schizophrenia patients. Notably, in some cases, social cognition is used as a mediator between the real worlds functioning and neurocognition, which suggests it is more proximal to daily functioning. Although patterns of neurocognitive performance through schizophrenia stages have been established, the course of social cognitive impairment remains relatively unknown. However, the study has concentrated on the stability of deficits throughout the illness phases that include social cognition-emotion processing, and social relationship perception. According to the authors, the measures of the above aspects determine the level of impairment in patients with schizophrenia across the illness phase. However, across the study, there was no evidence of improvement or progression over the stages of the disease. On the other hand, age played a minimal role in determining the effect of schizophrenia on social cognition. According to the authors, social cognitive impairments displays the symptoms in the early course of the illness and remains relatively stable. Although some of the episodes measured indicate psychotic episodes, once treated and patient put under medication, the condition is stabilized. The study proposes that patients with the symptoms should enrol for training programs to improve their social cognitive impairments. Chronic schizophrenia can be managed with antipsychotic medications to promote neurocognitive domains such as verbal memory, problem-solving, and reasoning. Effective cognitive capacities are increasingly crucial for healthy relationships. Although nonsocial neurocognition and social cognition are different, the two aspects are correlated in schizophrenia and share common cognitive processes. Although the impairment occurs at the early stages of the illness, the symptoms stabilize across the phase. The paper addresses social cognition in schizophrenia and integrates several processes of improving social cognition among patients with the disorder. Mainly the authors have evaluated the emotion perception and social knowledge among patients with schizophrenia in relation to healthy ones.