Associations Of Personality Traits With The Capacity-Performance Discrepancy Of Functional Outcome In Patients With Schizophrenia

Abstract

Objective

Functional capacity, which indicates one’s ability to perform everyday living tasks, contributes to real-world functional performance in patients with schizophrenia. However, functional capacity is sometimes not comparable with functional performance in clinical settings. We hypothesized that specific personality traits are related to this capacity-performance discrepancy of functional outcome.

Methods

The measures in this study were the UCSD Performance-based Skills Assessment Brief (UPSA-B) for functional capacity, the Social Functioning Scale (SFS) for functional performance, and the Temperament and Character Inventory-140 (TCI-140) for personality traits. A total of 94 stable outpatients with schizophrenia were divided into four groups based on combinations of their UPSA-B and SFS cut-off points, as follows: a high capacity and high performance (HH) group, a high capacity but low performance (HL) group, a low capacity but high performance (LH) group, and a low capacity and low performance (LL) group.

Results

There were no significant differences in demographics among the four groups. The LH group showed a significantly lower harm avoidance level than the LL group. The HL group showed a significantly lower persistence level than the HH group.

Conclusion

Lower harm avoidance may enhance functional performance, and lower persistence can limit functional performance, regardless of the primary levels of functional capacity in patients with schizophrenia. Novel and individualized psychosocial treatments considering the individual’s personality traits seem to be helpful for maximizing their functional performance in the community.

Keywords:

• functional capacity
• performance-based assessment
• real-world functioning
• social functioning
• Temperament and Character Inventory

Acknowledgment

This work was partly funded by Public Grant from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant Number JP25461787 to T.N.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.