Prevalence And Clinical Correlates Of Depressive Symptoms In Patients With Chonic Schizophrenia

Objective: Schizophrenia is a common disabling mental disorderr characterised by positive symptoms(delusions and hallucinations),negative symptoms(apathy,withdrawa),disorganisation symptoms(disorders of the thinking form and weird actions)and cognitive impairment,affecting about 20 million people worldwide.Patients with schizophrenia often meet depressive symptoms leading to a series of poor outcomes,such as poor quality of life,suicide,impaired fuctioning and frequent relapse.Because of the overlap between depressive symptoms and negative symptoms,clinical staff often neglect to treat depressive symptoms.There are few studies on depressive symptoms in patients with chronic schizophrenia.We recruited subjects from 1 general and 2 psychiatric specialty hospitals to evaluated the prevalence,risk factors and clinical correlates of depressive symptoms in chronic schizophrenia.Methods: We recruited 330 chronic schizophrenia from 3 hospitals eventually.Trained researchers used a predesigned questionnaire to collect sociodemographic and clinical data,including age,gender,duration of illness and medical conditions.Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale(PANSS)and Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia(CDSS)were used to evaluate psychotic symptoms and depressive symptoms respectovely.Several other scales were used to assess insomnia and extrapyramidal side effects(EPSs).Depending on the CDSS cut-off score of 5,we divided all subjects into a depressive subgroup and nondepressive subgroup to compare sociodemographic and clinical data.The influencing factors of depressive symptoms were analysised by correlation analysis and regression analysis.Results: The prevanlence of depressive symptoms in chronic schizophrenia was 27.0%.The depressive subgroup showed a higher level of insomnia,suicide idea,antipsychotic dose,akathisia,dyskinesia,positive factor,negative factor,disorganized-concrete factor and excited factor.The depressive symptoms were correlated to insomnia,suicide idea,akathisia,positive factor,negative factor,disorganized-concrete factor and excited-depressed factor,And our binary regression analysis showed that insomnia,suicidal ideation and positive factor were risk factors for depressive symptoms.Conclusion: The high prevanlence of depressive symptoms in patients with chronic schizophrenia should be paid enough attention by clinical staff.Schizophrenia with depressive symptoms encounter higher level of insomnia,suicidal ideation,antipsychotic dose,EPSs and schizophrenia symptoms.In addition,insomnia,suicidal ideation and positive symptoms are risk factors of depressive symptoms.Compared with depressive symptoms,insomnia,suicidal ideation and positive symptoms are easier to distinguish.Clinical staff should think highly of these three symptoms in order to reduce the occurrence of suicide and other poor outcomes.