Relationship of cognitive functioning, adaptive life skills, and negative symptom severity in poor-outcome geriatric schizophrenia patients

The authors assessed whether cognitive functioning and negative symptoms ar e related to functional outcome across severity of negative symptoms and ex amined relationships between symptom domains in patients with high versus l ow negative symptom severity. The interrelationships between cognitive func tioning and functional skills in poor-outcome geriatric schizophrenic patie nts were compared between those who were in the first (n = 81) and the four th quartiles (n = 127) of negative symptom severity based on the normative data in the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. If was found that negativ e symptoms and cognitive functioning were the strongest correlates of funct ional status in geriatric poor-outcome schizophrenic patients-regardless of negative symptom severity. Interestingly, the greater the severity of nega tive symptoms, the less strongly negative symptoms were related to function al outcome. The present findings demonstrate that the relationship of cogni tive functioning to social and adaptive functioning remains significant des pite differing levels of negative symptom severity.