Self-esteem in stabilized individuals with chronic schizophrenia: association with residual symptoms and cognitive functioning

Low self-esteem is regarded as a barrier to recovery from schizophrenia and the identification of factors affecting this psychological characteristic may help to implement effective therapeutic interventions. To this end, the present study aimed to assess whether residual symptoms of the disorder and performance on a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery might differently impact self-esteem among 70 stabilized outpatients with chronic schizophrenia from public outpatient mental health services. Self-esteem inter-correlated with the severity of overall symptomatology, affective and negative symptoms, with premorbid intelligence, and with performance in the domains of verbal learning and memory, visual memory, working memory, and verbal fluency. Residual affective symptoms, premorbid intelligence, and female sex predicted poorer self-esteem in multiple linear regression analysis. The findings of this study implicate that next to psychological interventions therapeutic strategies that specifically target affective symptoms of schizophrenia may have a beneficial impact on patients’ self-esteem.