Premorbid social competence and paranoid-nonparanoid status in female schizophrenic patients

The relation between premorbid social competence and paranoid-nonparanoid status was examined in a sample of 300 female schizophrenic patients. The subjects were drawn from the same state hospital employed in an earlier study conducted with male patients. The female paranoid patients were found to have better premorbid adjustment histories than the female nonparanoids. Tentative evidence was presented suggesting that the difference in premorbid social competence between paranoid and nonparanoid groups was greater for first and second admission patients than for patients with three or more admissions. The results were discussed in the context of their relation to previous research in this area. Differences between the female and male studies were noted, and the implications of sex differences in social competence were discussed both in terms of conventional measures of social competence and of the competence construct itself.