RESUMO
Objective:To investigate the differences of Ego Impairment Index (EII)of Rorschach test be-tween patients with schizophrenia and normal individuals.Methods:Totally 60 patients with schizophrenia (17-53 years old)meeting the criteria of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) and 60 age-and gender-matched normal subjects were involved in this study.The Rorschach ink blots test was used in both patients and normal subjects.The Ego Impairment Index (EII)of all the participants were calculated on the basis of their responses to the Rorschach ink blots test.The EII and the subcomponents of it (including distorted form quality,weighted sum of cognitive processing errors,distorted perceptions of human movement,critical con-tent,good human representation,and poor human representation)of the two samples were compared to explore EII's discrimination to patients and normal individuals.Results:The score of EII [(0.7 ± 1.7 )vs. (-0.9 ± 0.9 )],distorted form quality [(6.2 ± 2.3 )vs. (3.4 ± 2.6 )],weighted sum of cognitive processing errors [(14.0 ±6.5)vs.(7.2 ±4.2)],distorted perceptions of human movement [(0.7 ±1.2)vs.(0.3 ±0.7)], and poor human representation [(3.1 ±2.7)vs.(1.8 ±1.8)]were higher in patients than in normal participants (Ps0.05 ).The result of Diagnostic Test showed that when EII equaling to -0.5 ,the sensitivity,specificity,and Youden Index of it to distinguish patients from normal individuals were 0.9 1 ,0.75 ,and 0.66 respectively.Conclusion:It suggests that the ego functions of patients with schizophrenia have become serious damage compared with normal individuals.The EII of Rorschach test has high sensitivity while relatively low speci-ficity in discriminating patients with schizophrenia,which needs to be further perfected.