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Age Disorientation in Chronic Schizophrenia is Associated with Global Intellectual Impairment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

P. F. Liddle  and
T. J. Crow
P. F. Liddle
Affiliation:
Littlemore Hospital, Oxford
T. J. Crow
Affiliation:
Head of the Division of Psychiatry, Clinical Research Centre, Northwick Park Hospital, Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex HA1 3UJ
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Summary

From a population of long-stay patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia according to the St Louis criteria, a group of 21 patients with ‘age disorientation’ was selected, and compared on a series of tests of intellect and learning capacity with a matched control group of 21 schizophrenic patients without this feature. The age-disorientated patients demonstrated substantial impairments on tests of orientation and general knowledge, associational learning, the ‘famous personality’ test, tests of vocabulary and aphasia, Raven's matrices, the digit–symbol substitution test and the mental test score. We conclude that profound ‘organic-type’ psychological deficits (global impairment of intellectual function associated with temporal disorientation) undoubtedly occur in chronic schizophrenia. The findings on the ‘famous personality’ test and the Peabody vocabulary test did not exclude the possibility that such impairment arises early in life, at a time preceding the onset of the illness which leads to hospital admission.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 144 , Issue 2 , February 1984 , pp. 193 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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