Domains of Awareness in Schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia are often characterized as lacking insight or awareness into their illness and symp-toms, yet despite considerable research, we still lack a full understanding of the factors involved in causing poor awareness. Within schizophrenia, there has been shown to be a fractionation across dimensions of awareness into mental illness: of being ill, of symptoms, and of treat-ment compliance. Recently, attention has turned to evi-dence of a fractionation between awareness of illness and of cognitive impairments and functioning. The current study investigated the degree of fractionation across a broad range of domains of function in schizophrenia and how each domain may be associated with neuropsy-chological functioning, clinical, mood, and demographic variables. Thirty-one mostly chronic stable patients