Insight and Treatment Outcomes in Schizophrenia: Post-hoc Analysis of a Long-term, Double-blind Study Comparing Lurasidone and Quetiapine XR

Conclusion: In this post-hoc analysis, flexibly dosed lurasidone 40 to 160mg/d was found to be associated with significantly greater improvement in insight compared to flexibly dosed quetiapine XR 200 to 800mg/d over long-term treatment in patients with schizophrenia. Across treatment groups, improvement in insight and judgment was significantly associated with improvement in cognition, functional capacity, quality of well-being, and depressive symptoms over time. Keywords: Insight, schizophrenia, cognition, functional capacity, quality of well-being, depressive symptoms, lurasidone, quetiapine XR Innov Clin Neurosci. 2017;14(11–12):23–29 Poor insight, including impairments in awareness of illness, commonly occurs in patients with schizophrenia and represents a major risk factor for poor treatment outcomes.1–8 Reduced insight has been found to be associated with poor treatment adherence;8–11 more severe symptoms of illness;3 and various deficits in cognition, social cognition, and functional performance.4,6,8 Improving insight is therefore a key therapeutic goal for patients with schizophrenia.12 Poor insight in schizophrenia has been linked to reduced awareness of the presence and significance of psychotic symptoms,13,14 impaired self-assessment of cognitive and functional performance,15 deficits in appraising and responding to effort-based tasks,16 and reduced subjective quality of well-being.5,12,17–20 A recent study suggested that the inability to make an accura...
Source: Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Current Issue Original Research cognition depressive symptoms functional capacity insight lurasidone quality of well-being quetiapine XR schizophrenia Source Type: research