Is there an intellectual disability in schizophrenia?

Not necessarily, there is cognitive disability but it is not the same. Commonly confused. Often people with sz feel they have become “stupid” when in reality they are just as smart as before, but their ability to process/recall information has been impaired. That is cognitive.

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People with schizophrenia show an IQ deficit of about 1 SD (15 points) below healthy controls. For a large subgroup of people with schizophrenia (close to half of us), IQ scores will deteriorate, at least until illness onset. There is an intellectual deficit, but like with cognitive tests, some people will score normal or above normal without any decline. It is possible that these people are also in some way affected by an intellectual/cognitive deficit despite their normal scores.

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Well, opinions are different here i see… i guess my paranoia and my inner conflicts dont help my thought, isnt it treebeard? I sometimes cant even talk, idk why… lack of reason i guess plus too much closed in myself :expressionless: .

I’ve seen studies that tend to correlate low IQ with sz, meaning many with sz have also been found to have low IQ, however correlation is not causation…for example it’s also been found that those with lower IQs have poorer prognosis when it comes to coping w mental illness, thus these individuals are more likely to be hospitalized and recognized by the mental health community (thus more likely to be included in these types of studies).

Also I feel like it’s going to be very difficult to score well on a traditional IQ test with poor cognitive abilities. And I don’t much like IQ tests to begin with because of how controversial they are as a method for testing intelligence, there’s a lot of debate on it in the field of psychology.

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This could definitely affect your intelligence and your cognitive abilities. But if you try your best to get better, and believe that you can, there is a better chance that you will.

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Yes, i guess its a struggle… when i was tired and in bad shape i was having low scores. My best iq score was 120. So yes, i guess intelligence is controversial…

Correlation is the best we’ve got. It’s not like we can manipulate people into getting schizophrenia. And that’s why it’s so important to point out that, very often, IQ deteriorates before illness onset, which is compatible with the neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia and also with neuroimaging studies showing reduced gray matter volume and connectivity in areas that are important for cognitive and intellectual functions. We also see a similar but less severe deficit of cognition in healthy relatives of people with schizophrenia. And when you try to rule out the effect of selection of people with low intelligence in studies, you still get a large and very significant deficit in intelligence. Also, if you compare it to other illnesses, groups which should have the same pattern of people with low intelligence being diagnosed more often, you can clearly see that the intelligence deficit in schizophrenia is several times larger than you would expect if that skewed selection hypothesis were true.

They’re not as controversial as you might think. They’re the best method we have of estimating intelligence.

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Just because it’s the best method doesn’t mean it’s an excellent method. Also there are several different kinds of IQ tests out there so I’m not sure which one you are referring to. Did you know that the most basic IQ tests (Weschler and some other guy I don’t remember) only test intelligence based on verbal, math and spatial skills? Seems a very limited way to test intelligence to me. Gardener and some other folks expanded that which is better but still intelligence is such a complex topic.

Anyhow I could understand that point of view if you were going along with intelligence as measured in those verbal/math/spatial ways. I’m getting a battery of psych tests soon and they’re taking an IQ test so I wonder if mine will have changed.

I won’t comment for the studies, but i am higher functioning and when I was on meds, the common trend I would disclose was “I just feel dumb and can’t think at all” prior to meds iq of 119, post meds and in good working track 162. I dont rely purely on iq to say intelligence, buy when I can manage large projects today, and couldn’t manage to ensure I made it to weekly dr appointments.

I’m sure not functioning at the level I used to when I was younger, but that’s partly age as well.

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I think ’ intellectual disability’ which suggests an IQ under 70 is the wrong phrase to use. Most people with schizophrenia are not intellectually disabled . Many though have cognitive problems and even those with normal/above average IQs quite often have areas of cognitive difficulty(In the US this would suggest a learning disability).
Going from memory (feel free to correct me if I am wrong) verbal IQ is likely to be greater than nonverbal/performance IQ in the majority of cases.

Before I got on ziprasadone (Geodon) I could not read a book.

I’d be on one page for an hour, my mind going from one place to another, without having read a single word.

Since getting on ziprasadone though, I have written a book!

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The Stanford Binet. Also, they’re not “the most basic”. They’re the most rigorous and well-planned. No other psychological tests come near them in terms of the amount of work that’s put into each new version.

That’s not correct. They do actually test quite a few other things, like memory, attention, cognitive speed, visual reasoning, etc. I should know. Did you know they choose the kinds of tests that have the biggest predictive validity when it comes to the g-factor of intelligence, while trying to make the tests as broad as possible, and that adding tests for most other suggested forms of intelligence, like social intelligence and emotional intelligence, would actually reduce the accuracy and usefulness of the tests?

WAIS and the Stanford-Binet. The differences are not that big. They use the same theoretical framework for understanding intelligence (Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory), and are about equally good in almost all respects.

No, it just means that if you want to talk about an intelligence deficit without talking about IQ, you don’t know what you’re talking about at all.

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I’ve lived at an assisted living center for the mentally ill for sixteen years. A lot of people come and go here, so I’ve seen a lot of schizophrenics. I’ve heard that on average schizophrenics are less intelligent that the average population, and what I have observed bears that out. However, there is a small subset of schizophrenics who are substantially smarter than the average population. One night a long time ago someone posted an IQ test on this site, and virtually all the people who took it scored substantially smarter than the average population. Most of them were smart enough to be in Mensa. The IQ test seemed like a very unbiased, accurate test to me.

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I was just sharing what I learned from my psych classes…obviously they didn’t go a whole lot in depth I guess because we never learned any of that. I acknowledge I don’t know everything but yeesh do you have to be rude about it? Anyways I’m backing out for now.

Just adding this to the mix.

Yes… there will be one in a hundred people who may dislike you for a moment but you could get along with them all.

No, that was unnecessary. Sorry. :slight_smile:

Would you call a hammer useless if the head wasn’t perfectly flat and the handle was a bit crooked, and use your hands instead to hammer the nail in? I’m not even going to watch that video. Just the title makes it sound meaningless. :crazy_face:

Even people who are more well versed on this matter than any of us are involved in contentious debates about the validity of IQ as a measure of intelligence.

As a measure of intelligence for those of us with a spiky profile it’s seen to be problematic in accurately defining levels of intelligence .

In my case I have scored in the very superior range on online verbal tests of intelligence whilst scoring on average well below average on nonverbal tests like Raven matrices.

If posters here were ranked verbally I would be at or near the top of the class, but at or near the bottom if ranked non verbally.

If IQ tests were all of the Raven matrices type I would be seen as dumber than Forrest Gump but obviously I am not . For starters,if so, I would struggle to participate here.