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The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on negative symptoms in individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis and outpatients with chronic schizophrenia
- Source :
- European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Negative symptoms are core features of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders that are frequently observed across all phases of illness. By their nature, COVID-19 social isolation, physical distancing, and health precautions induce behavioural aspects of negative symptoms. However, it is unclear whether these prevention measures also lead to increases in experiential negative symptoms, whether such effects are equivalent across individual negative symptom domains, and if exacerbations occur equivalently across phases of illness. The current study compared negative symptom severity scores obtained during the pandemic to pre-pandemic assessments in two samples: (1) outpatients with chronic schizophrenia (SZ: n = 32) and matched healthy controls (CN: n = 31) and (2) individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR: n = 25) and matched CN (n = 30). Pre-pandemic ratings of negative symptoms were clinically elevated in SZ and CHR groups, which did not differ from each other in severity. In SZ, ratings obtained during the pandemic were significantly higher than pre-pandemic ratings for all 5 domains (alogia, blunted affect, anhedonia, avolition, and asociality) and item-level analyses indicated that exacerbations occurred on both experiential and behavioral symptoms of anhedonia, avolition, and asociality. In contrast, CHR only exhibited increases in anhedonia and avolition items during the pandemic compared to pre-ratings. Findings suggest that negative symptoms should be a critical treatment target during and after the pandemic in the schizophrenia spectrum given that they are worsening and critically related to risk for conversion, functional outcome, and recovery.
- Subjects :
- Psychosis
Alogia
Anhedonia
Asociality
Risk Assessment
Prodrome
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Outpatients
medicine
Humans
Pharmacology (medical)
Attenuated psychosis syndrome
Social isolation
Pandemics
Biological Psychiatry
Avolition
Original Paper
Pandemic
business.industry
COVID-19
General Medicine
medicine.disease
030227 psychiatry
Coronavirus
Psychiatry and Mental health
Psychotic Disorders
Case-Control Studies
Chronic Disease
Schizophrenia
Blunted Affect
Schizophrenic Psychology
medicine.symptom
business
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Clinical psychology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14338491 and 09401334
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....97a0fee6491bc32d1a72f9dbbd0a9f2d