Affect Regulation in Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a serious mental disease, characterised by psychosis (delusions and hallucinations), apathy (a lack of motivation), social withdrawal, and cognitive impairment, which result in impaired functioning in different areas, such as work, school, independent living, and interpersonal relationships (Mueser and McGurk, 2004). Apart from the above-mentioned deficits, these patients also experience emotional disturbances, which have received increasing attention over two past decades (Edwards et al., 2001; Pinkham et al., 2007). For example, schizophrenic patients are impaired in their ability to recognize emotional facial expressions (Loughland et al., 2002). The abnormalities in emotion identification and emotional behaviour have been found to be associated with the poor social functioning observed in patients with schizophrenia (Borod and Madigan, 2000). It is still unclear whether the impairment in affect perception is a specific emotional deficit or whether it is related to a more generalized impairment in perception and attention (Bozikas et al., 2004).

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