Schizophrenia patients with poor clinical insight report less subjective memory problems

This study aimed to explore the relationships among clinical insight, subjective memory complaints, and objective memory performance in patients with schizophrenia. We recruited 205 patients with schizophrenia and 221 healthy controls in this study. The participants were administered a subjective-report scale on memory (the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire), and several objective memory tasks measuring verbal memory, visual memory, and working memory. Clinical insight was measured with an item in the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. We found that when patients with schizophrenia were divided into subgroups with good and poor insight, both subgroups showed impairment in memory performance compared with controls. The schizophrenia patients with good insight reported similar memory complaints as controls whereas patients with poor insight reported less memory complaints than did the controls. These findings suggest that clinical insight may be related to subjective memory complaints, but not objective memory performance.