Demographic, clinical, and neurocognitive correlates of everyday functional impairment in severe mental illness

Although cognitive deficits often accompany severe mental illness, their im plications for everyday functioning remain poorly understood. Tn this study , an occupational therapist (OT) rated the everyday functioning of 105 adul t psychiatric patients. Using demographic, clinical, and cognitive variable s, the authors tested alternative models to account for the observed variab ility in OT wrings. Although age, education, and the presence of schizophre nia each contributed to a model that accounted for 27% of the variation in functional independence, adding terms for auditory divided attention and ve rbal learning increased the proportion of explained variance to 45% and dec reased the beta weights For age and education-but not schizophrenia-to nons ignificant levels, These findings demonstrate the relevance of cognitive pe rformance to everyday functioning in severe mental illness. They are discus sed with respect to hypothesized determinants of psychiatric disability.