Association between empathy and clinical symptoms in chronic schizophrenia: A large sample study based on Chinese Han population.

BACKGROUND: In patients with schizophrenia, clinical symptoms and cognitive impairment are its core features, both of which have a significant impact on the prognosis and functional outcome. Empathy, as an important social cognition, has been found to be associated with the clinical symptoms in schizophrenia, but the conclusions on this issue are inconsistent. Therefore, this study will continue to explore it through a large sample of inpatients with chronic schizophrenia in the Chinese Han population. METHODS: We obtained the sociodemographic characteristics of 987 inpatients, measured their clinical symptoms using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), and assessed their self-reported empathy using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). The factor score for negative symptoms (FSNS) of PANSS was additionally calculated. RESULTS: Correlation and linear regression analysis showed that patients' PANSS scores were widely correlated with their IRI scores. In particular, the negative symptoms of patients were significantly correlated to IRI total score (r = -0.131, p < .001) and subscales such as Perspective Taking (PT) (r = -0.233, p < .001). FSNS had close relationships with empathy as well. There are also many significant associations between other dimensions, such as general psychopathology and Perspective Taking (PT) or Fantasy (FS) (all p < .05). CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicated that clinical symptoms, especially negative symptoms, were closely related to their current empathy in patients with schizophrenia, suggesting that the severity of clinical symptoms may be a powerful factor in predicting social cognition such as empathy of schizophrenia.

Prevalence and clinical profiles of comorbid anxiety in first episode and drug naïve patients with major depressive disorder.

BACKGROUND: Anxiety is a common comorbidity in major depressive disorder (MDD) that has been studied extensively in the past. However, few studies have explored anxiety in drug naïve (FEDN) patients with MDD and those presenting with a first episode. The objective of this current study was to examine the prevalence and risk factors of anxiety in FEDN patients with MDD in order to understand the relationship between MDD and anxiety in the acute early phase and provide important implications for therapeutic interventions. METHODS: A total of 1718 FEDN patients with MDD were recruited in this cross-sectional study. Their anthropometric and clinical data, including suicide attempt and psychotic symptom, were collected. The Hamilton depression scale (HAMD) and Hamilton anxiety scale (HAMA) were used to evaluate depression and anxiety for all the patients in this study. RESULTS: Overall, we found that the prevalence of anxiety in FEDN MDD patients was 80.3%. Correlation analysis showed that anxiety was associated with suicide attempt and psychotic symptom in FEDN patients with MDD. The rate of suicide attempt and psychosis in above patients with anxiety was 24.3% and 12.3%, respectively. Furthermore, stepwise regression analysis showed that suicide attempt and psychotic symptom were significant predictors for anxiety in FEDN patients with MDD. CONCLUSIONS: Our study showed that the prevalence of comorbid anxiety in FEDN patients with MDD is very high. We also found that two clinical variables, suicide attempt and psychosis, are risk factors for comorbid anxiety in FEDN patients with MDD.