Social relationships in schizophrenia: A review

Abstract

Diffi culties with social occupations are among the most common for individuals with schizophrenia. The defi cits related to social functioning have been shown to decrease the quality of life (QOL) and life satisfaction for individuals in this population. A critical review of the literature was completed in order to examine the factors that effect and impact social engagement, QOL and life satisfaction for individuals with schizophrenia. A comprehensive search of the CINAHL, PsycINFO and PubMed databases was conducted for articles published during the period of 1997-2007. From 156 peer-reviewed articles meeting the search criteria, 41 were selected for analysis and included in the review. The main factors effecting QOL and life satisfaction that emerged from the literature include the following: interpersonal relationship status, employment status, effects of stigma, neuro-cognitive skills and functioning, as well as effectiveness of interventions. The review suggests that individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia experience decreased QOL and social satisfaction in social relationships as a result of these factors.

Affective empathy in schizophrenia: a meta-analysis

“…Social cognition, or the mental operations that enable social interactions like perceiving, interpreting, and generating responses to the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of others , has received particular emphasis (Green and Leitman, 2008), with one meta-analysis indicating social cognitive abilities are more closely related to functional outcomes for those with schizophrenia than neurocognition (Fett et al, 2011). Many consider the social deficits seen in schizophrenia to be a core feature of the illness, contributing fundamentally to the nature of psychosis (Gallese, 2003) and long-term outcome (Stevens et al, 2009). People with schizophrenia exhibit worse performance than healthy controls in multiple social cognitive domains, including social perception, emotion processing, emotion perception, and theory of mind (Savla et al, 2013).…”

Subjective well-being, general self-efficacy and coping with stress in former psychiatric patients preparing for the peer support role: an exploratory study

“…Social support, which is an important resource as a predictor of well-being and coping with stress [46,47], not analyzed here, may also play a key role. As there are more variables that have been demonstrated to be effective in the transfer to community life of former psychiatric patients it is difficult to mention here all of them [48].…”

Genome-wide association study of social relationship satisfaction: significant loci and correlations with psychiatric conditions

“…Social relationship satisfaction is one contributor to subjective wellbeing, alongside other domains such as occupational, financial, and health satisfaction 6 . Difficulties in forming and maintaining social relationships are reported widely in psychiatric conditions [1][2][3][4] . Positive social relationship satisfaction can both reduce the risk and ameliorate the severity of a phenotypes and specific psychiatric conditions and psychological phenotypes; 3.…”