Subjective experiences in schizophrenia: a critical review

The current status of subjective experiences in schizophrenia is examined. Subjective experiences are very frequent disorders in schizophrenic patients, and their study has been largely neglected. Recently, a number of scales that evaluate subjective experiences have been published, and although the psychometric properties of most scales have not been sufficiently studied, they seem to have adequate interrater reliability, internal consistency, and convergent validity. A higher number of subjective experiences is associated with the female sex and is inversely correlated with the level of education and lack of insight into illness. Hypothetically, subjective experiences are ascribed to impairments of information processing; however, studies on the relationship between these symptoms and measures of information processing are scarce and contradictory. In the acute stage of the illness, subjective experiences are associated with positive symptoms, and at this stage they may reflect the process activity of schizophrenia. In the remission stage of the illness, subjective experiences are related to negative symptoms, and they constitute the subjective correlate of the psychological deficit. A theory of subjective experiences within the framework of the vulnerability/stress model of schizophrenia is proposed.