Social functioning in early psychosis: are all the domains predicted by the same variables?

The study aims to determine the predictive value of negative symptoms, depression, short-term verbal learning and gender on three areas of social functioning--social life, vocational functioning and independent living skills--in a sample of 88 individuals with early psychosis.

Participants were recruited from early psychosis intervention programmes and community mental health clinics in British Columbia, Canada, and completed the following measures: client's assessment of strengths, interests, and goals, brief psychiatric rating scale, Beck depression inventory and California verbal learning task.

Multiple linear regressions revealed that: more negative symptoms and higher depression predicted a less active social life; more negative symptoms and poorer short-term verbal learning ability predicted lower vocational functioning; and more negative symptoms and male gender predicted lower independent living skills.

Results suggest that negative symptoms are predictive of all three areas of functioning but that specific variables add significant unique variance to individual areas of social functioning. Although a global social functioning score can be considered useful, greater precision can be gained by the use of domain-specific measures.