Felt affect in good- and poor-outcome schizophrenia

BACKGROUND: Family members and caregivers may misinterpret blunted affect as a true lack of emotion in patients with schizophrenia. AIM: To assess felt affect or experienced emotion among low- and high-functioning schizophrenics. METHODS: Two hundred people with schizophrenia were assessed using the Global Assessment of Functioning scale of DSM-IV and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). RESULTS: The findings reveal that people with good- and poor-outcome schizophrenia show no significant differences in the emotions experienced, implying that felt affect is comparable regardless of the severity of symptoms in chronic schizophrenia. In fact, low-functioning patients scored a mean (SD) of 46.07 (13.13) on the PANAS, in contrast to a slightly lower scored by high-functioning patients (44.33 [12.03]). CONCLUSION: Although patients may show flat affect, and therefore be mistakenly considered withdrawn and apathetic by the observer, they do, in fact, experience as much, or perhaps even more emotion than their higher-functioning counterparts.