Improving Cognitive Functioning in People with Schizophrenia
A special issue of Journal of Clinical Medicine (ISSN 2077-0383). This special issue belongs to the section "Mental Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2019) | Viewed by 20878
Special Issue Editors
Interests: psychosis; bipolar disorder; depressive disorder; functioning; staging; precision psychiatry; cognitive remediation; early intervention; procognitive drugs; gut microbiota
Interests: psychosis; bipolar disorder; depressive disorder; functioning; staging; precision psychiatry; cognitive remediation; psychoeducation; early intervention; procognitive drugs; drug development
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Schizophrenia is a chronic disorder characterized by psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and disorganization and negative symptoms such as apathy and social withdrawal. It is also characterized by cognitive dysfunctions, which are present from the onset or even before the onset of the disorder. Cognitive impairment predicts disability and poor general functioning in the daily life of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Although cognition is not a formal part of the current diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, it is considered as a core feature of this illness.
Impairments in a broad range of cognitive domains have been consistently reported in individuals with schizophrenia, and persist throughout the course of the illness. Thus, interventions that are designed to treat cognitive symptoms are of high priority. Although antipsychotic medications help to treat positive symptoms of schizophrenia, the existing literature demonstrates that they have minimal effects on cognition. Nevertheless, the current studies on procognitive drugs seem to show encouraging results, and different meta-analytic studies have shown the efficacy of cognitive remediation. Several factors could affect cognitive function, and the evidence suggests that one of the main factors could be the cognitive reserve. Higher cognitive reserve is associated with a later onset of psychosis; greater illness insight; and better clinical, cognitive, and functional outcomes in people with schizophrenia. Thus, increasing cognitive reserve could become a skill that will allow people with schizophrenia to cope better with the disease and minimize their decline in cognitive and psychosocial functioning. The present Special Issue aims to go in-depth about the cognitive and functional impairment that people with schizophrenia suffer from and to describe the lines of research that are currently ongoing about enhancers of the cognitive and functional status of people with schizophrenia.
Dr. Iria Grande
Dr. Eduard Vieta
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- functioning
- schizophrenia
- negative symptoms
- cognition
- procognitive drugs
- remediation
- cognitive reserve
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