The Effect of Demographic Characteristics on Symptom Scores in Untreated Schizophrenic Patients

Objectives: Schizophrenia is a disorder with different clinical features. Schizophrenia may start insidiously and slow and go on for many years. But the negative symptoms and deficiency symptoms leading to social deterioration may come to the forefront. All these factors are taken into consideration, our aim in this study was to examine the demographic and clinical effects of symptoms on schizophrenic patients who have not yet been treated.

Methods: Eighty patients who were admitted to the Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic, who did not have any previous antipsychotic medications and who did not use medications at the time of admission and who met the criteria for schizophrenia according to the DSM-5. Sociodemografic Data Form and the PANSS scale were used to assess the clinical status of the patients.

Results: When the demographic characteristics of the participants were examined, 33 (41.2%) were female and 47 (58.8%) were male. The mean age of the patients was 31.08±9.37; mean education year was 8.76±3.53. When the patients participating in the study were evaluated in terms of gender, marital status, working status, smoking status, and family history, no statistical differences were found between the groups in terms of their PANSS scores (p>0.05). However, the PANSS Negative subscale scores (p<.001), general psychopathology scores (p=0.006), and total PANSS scores (p=0.003) were statistically significantly different between the three groups when the patients were untreated for 0–1 years, 1–5 years, and 5 years.

Conclusions: In this study none of the sociodemographic factors we assessed had any effect on symptom severity. However, there are different results in the literature regarding gender, age, marital status and working status. Besides, it has been determined that the most important clinical manifestation in our study is the period without treatment. Further studies should identify demographic and clinical features that affect schizophrenic symptom changes.