Schizophrenia Daily News Blog

Job Success Predictors for SZ Patients

A team from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis suggests that the job performance of schizophrenia patients may be more affected by the extent of their cognitive impairments than on the availability of vocational rehabilitation.

The team interviewed 112 schizophrenia patients enrolled in employment programs, and tested them for verbal learning and memory skills, attention, information processing ability, and executive functioning.

After four months, results showed that patients with higher neuropsychological profile scores had better work behaviors, including work habits, personal presentation, work quality, social skills, cooperativeness, number of hours worked per week, and wages earned.

Jovier Evans, primary investigator for the team, emphasizes that both cognitive ability and vocational support resources essentially contribute to the job success of schizophrenia patients.

"Vocational services seem best equipped to help people get jobs, but do not necessarily help clients in the performance of their duties on the jobs," note Evans et al in the journal Schizophrenia Research.

For the full article, see "Cognitive measures predict schizophrenic job success" (Sep 3 2004) at http://www.psychiatrysource.com

For more information about returning to work after a diagnosis of schizophrenia, please see the following links:

1) Can a person with schizophrenia return to work/school? - information and suggestions for a smooth transition

2) Work-related resources for people with disabilities - scroll down to the Resources for Returning to Work section.