Stress loading and Psychopathology in Schizophrenia: Ramification for management

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia is a chronic disease. It is characterized by disorders of thought, perceptions, sense of self and behavior. It was found that stress play an important role in pathophysiology of schizophrenia. It is time to know regarding particular type of stress experienced by schizophrenic patient. AIMS: Aim of our study was to find out perceived stress in patient with schizophrenia and correlation with psychopathology. METHODS: We had assessed total 100 participants (50 patients with schizophrenia and 50 healthy controls). We applied PANSS to assess psychopathology and we applied students stress dimension questionnaire (SSDQ) to assess stress loading. Correlation between Psychopathology and stress was analyzed by using Pearson’s correlation. RESULTS: Mean of PANSS score among patients with schizophrenia was 65.56 (SD 13.58). Mean of cumulative stress loading on SSDQ was 341.23 (SD 77.61) in patients with schizophrenia and 226.97 (SD 69.14) in healthy control. We found that there was negative correlation between PANSS and cumulative stress loading. Pearson’s correlation coefficient between PANSS and cumulative stress loading was r : 0.522 ( p value .000). CONCLUSION: Positive correlation between Psychopathology and stress is found. It clears that it’s time to address stress in patient with schizophrenia and non pharmacotherapy for stress must be included in patient with schizophrenia.