Verbal Working Memory, Negative Symptomatology and Prediction of Unawareness of Achieved Effect of Medication in Schizophrenia

The Unawareness of achieved Effect of Medication, an important factor of insight in to the illness, has an important impact on compliance. Most patients only take medication due to pressure from their families or because they just follow their doctor's recommendations.

To examine relation between the unawareness of achieved effect of medication in past, verbal working memory and symptomatology. The socio-demographic and clinical details were gathered using a specially designed datasheet of 45 male schizophrenia inpatients [ICD-10-DCR] between age range 18–50 yrs with duration of illness less than 5 years and treated at least for one month. After this to measure symptomatology and insight, PANSS and Scale for Unawareness of Mental Disorder (SUMD) were administered respecResults of the stively on them. the digit span test a measure of verbal working memory was administered. Results of the study shows there is significant association between the unawareness of achieved effect of medication in past, PANSS negative, PANSS total, PANSS General Psychopathology and Digit Span Backward & Total (p<0.05). Also unawareness is predicted by Digit Span Backward. Among the symptomatology and verbal working memory, verbal working memory was found significant predictor of Unawareness of achieved Effect of medication in past.