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Cognition in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Why compare cognition in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder? 

Cognitive deficits are core features of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Establishing differences in cognition between these disorders may be useful for identifying differences in the underlying illness pathologies, and may provide potential targets for individual treatments.

What is the evidence for cognitive functioning in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder?

Moderate to high quality evidence shows small to medium-sized effects of poorer global cognition, executive functioning, social cognition, processing speed, attention, reasoning and problem solving, learning, and memory in people with schizophrenia (including early onset schizophrenia) compared to bipolar disorder (including paediatric bipolar disorder).

There was a medium-sized effect of poorer pre-illness onset cognitive functioning and a large effect of poorer post-illness onset cognitive functioning in people with schizophrenia compared to controls without a mental illness. In people with bipolar disorder compared to controls without a mental illness, there was a small effect of poorer pre-illness onset cognitive functioning and a medium-sized effect of poorer post-illness onset cognitive functioning. People with schizoaffective disorder showed poorer cognitive performance than people with bipolar disorder, but better cognitive performance than people with schizophrenia.

March 2022

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Last updated at: 2:17 pm, 15th March 2022
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Tags:  General cognition

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