Associations between negative and positive automatic thoughts and clinical variables in patients with schizophrenia

Tomoya Takeda; Masahito Nakataki; Hidehiro Umehara; Shusuke Numata

doi:10.1016/j.scog.2023.100298

Associations between negative and positive automatic thoughts and clinical variables in patients with schizophrenia

Schizophr Res Cogn. 2023 Dec 2:35:100298. doi: 10.1016/j.scog.2023.100298. eCollection 2024 Mar.

Authors

Tomoya Takeda¹, Masahito Nakataki¹, Hidehiro Umehara¹, Shusuke Numata¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Tokushima University, Japan.

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships between negative and positive automatic thoughts and clinical variables in patients with schizophrenia. The participants included 36 patients with schizophrenia (male = 16; female = 20; age = 42.86 ± 9.40) who were outpatients in the Department of Psychiatry at Tokushima University Hospital. We used the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire-Revised (ATQ-R), Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia (CDSS), and Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS) to assess negative and positive automatic thoughts, positive and negative symptoms, depressive symptoms, and neurocognition, respectively. Spearman rank correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the relationships between negative and positive automatic thoughts and clinical variables. No relationship was observed between negative and positive automatic thoughts. Negative automatic thoughts were related to depressive symptoms. Positive automatic thoughts were related to neurocognition. We therefore surmise that each automatic thought might have different clinical features and outcomes, and should therefore be treated accordingly.

Keywords: Depressive symptoms; Negative and positive automatic thoughts; Neurocognition; Positive and negative symptoms; Schizophrenia.