الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Schizophrenia is a severe and persistent mental disorder that places significant burden on the individuals who suffer from it, as well as their families and society. The illness is defined by the presence of positive (i.e., hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking) and negative (i.e., poverty of speech, lack of motivation, flat affect) symptoms.
While schizophrenia is noted for its psychotic symptoms, cognitive impairments are important aspects of the illness as well. While these cognitive impairments are well known as predictors of different aspects of real-world functional outcomes, social disability in schizophrenia may have a number of additional determinants.
One of the domains where in impairments may contribute to social disability in schizophrenia is social cognition. This is an area that is receiving an increase in attention that parallels the increased interest in cognition in schizophrenia over the past 10 years. Cognitive impairments are a common manifestation of schizophrenia, including memory, attention, and executive function. One debilitating consequence of schizophrenia is social and occupational dysfunction, although patients may well possess the cognitive ability to complete required tasks.
Social cognition is defined as the ability to make inferences based on emotional information (emotion, perception or recognition), the ability to correctly identify and respond to social interactions and social rules or knowledge (social perception), and the ability to make inferences about another person’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions.
Today, consensus exists that social cognition is related to, though distinct from, basic neurocognition and may contribute in a nonredundant way to functional outcome. The aims of the present study were to assess social cognition functioning among a sample of inpatients presenting with schizophrenia and to correlate between symptom profile & disease severity of schizophrenia and social cognition.
To achieve the aim of the study, this study carried out in inpatient adult psychiatric ward of Al Maamoura mental health hospital in Alexandria. This hospital is administered by General secretariat of mental health of the Ministry of Health and Population, Egypt.
The sample group consisted of 100 subjects who were divided in to two groups as follows:
• Fifty patients with schizophrenia.
• Fifty age and sex matched healthy control subjects.
Thorough clinical psychiatric examination was done; using DSM IV TR criteria for diagnosing patients with schizophrenia, excluding any uncontrolled medical condition as indicated by clinical history, physical examination, or laboratory findings also current alcohol or other substance abuse disorder in the sample group. Severity of illness was rated by Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Then cognitive psychometric test were done which was Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-third Edition. Then social cognition measures were done which were; The Social Skills Inventory scale, Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Scale and reading the mind in the Eyes Test.