Is the treatment response of attention impairment in schizophrenia associated with negative symptoms or positive ones?
Objective: In this study, we aimed to investigate if the treatment response of attention impairment in schizophrenia is associated with negative symptoms or positive symptoms. Method: We recruited 27 subjects diagnosed as schizophrenia according to DSM-IV. All patients, had been assessed by two psychiatrists using Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms, Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms, UKU Side Effect Rating Scale and Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale after a wash out period which was one week for oral antipsychotics and two weeks for long acting injections. Follow up assessments had been done weekly for six weeks. Results: When the baseline scores were compared with the ones assessed during six weeks treatment period, we found that all five of the positive symptom scores and attention impairment score decreased at statistically significant level. On the other hand, we found no significant decrease in negative symptom scores during six week treatment. Total score of p
