Predictors of Functional Disability in Schizophrenia
Video Transcript
Dr Andrew Cutler: Hello. I am Dr Andrew Cutler, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, and I am the Chief Medical Officer for the Neuroscience Education Institute in Carlsbad, California. And my practice is actually based in Lakewood Ranch, Florida.
Amber Hoberg: I'm Amber Hoberg. I'm a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. I practice at Baptist Healthcare System and Morningstar Family Medicine in San Antonio, Texas. So, Andy, this is kind of looking at what predicts functional disability and schizophrenia. A lot of people think positive symptoms do, but actually, you can look here at this slide and see that actually, cognition is one of those that actually does predict disability in our patients who suffer from this disorder. Also, social cognition, we talked a lot about that. Reading the room, being able to read people. This is definitely something that, with functional disability, leads to functional disability in people with schizophrenia. Negative symptoms. A lot of my patients suffer with negative symptoms of this disorder. And as well as functional capacity issues. The lower the functional capacity of a patient with schizophrenia, the more disability is associated with the disease state.
Dr Andrew Cutler: Yeah, functional capacity is interesting because obviously we all have different potential, different capacities, different levels of function, and I think one of the goals, of course, is to maximize somebody's potential, maximize their function. Of course, not everybody's going to function as well as others, but we really do want to try to maximize function, which really leads to trying to improve cognition.
Amber Hoberg: Which is a great thing. Thank you so much for joining and watching today.
Dr Andrew Cutler: And for more information, please check out Psych Congress Network.
