Pragmatic language dysfunctions in schizophrenia and depression patients – A preliminary study

Abstract

Background: Studies do not clarify whether disturbances in pragmatic language skills are specific for schizophrenia or are connected with psychiatric disorders for example mood disorder. The aim of this paper is to investigate if such impairments could be specific to schizophrenia and evaluate their association with the psychopathological symptoms. Method: Eighty-two participants were enrolled: 41 with schizophrenia and 41 with major depression. Pragmatic language skills were assessed by the Polish version of the Right Hemisphere Language Battery, schizophrenia and depression symptoms were evaluated by Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. Results: Schizophrenia and depression patients varied in comprehension of implicit information, humour understanding, processing metaphors, understanding prosody and discourse comprehension. Patients with schizophrenia scored significantly lower in all measured skills except for understanding emotional prosody in which they scored higher. A correlation was found between depression and some pragmatic language skills. Conclusions: The results of this preliminary study suggest that pragmatic language skills could be more seriously disturbed in patients with schizophrenia than with depression. They also imply that pragmatic language dysfunctions may be independent of schizophrenia symptoms being a possible trait of the illness. Further studies on pragmatic language skills in mental health groups could help to identify dysfunctions specific for schizophrenia and could give a better understanding of pragmatic disturbances in mental disorders as a whole.