Impact of cognitive and social cognitive impairment on functional outcomes in patients with schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severely disabling disease that affects millions of people worldwide. The notion of recovery from schizophrenia has recently become a topic of both research and clinical focus. With the advent of antipsychotic medications in the 1950s, many more patients achieved symptom remission than ever before. However, less than half of all patients have been able to achieve recovery. With so many drugs available to improve the symptoms of schizophrenia, why is the disorder still associated with such severe disability? In the last couple of decades, researchers and clinicians have begun to realize that a hindrance to widespread recovery is that available antipsychotic medications have been effective in treating the positive symptoms (hallucinations and delusions) of schizophrenia but not other features of illness such as cognitive impairment. Dysfunction in cognition and social cognition has a significant impact on patients' functional status, meaning that impaired cognition and social cognition should be treatment targets to improve the likelihood of recovery.