Longitudinal relationship between Personal and Social Performance (PSP) and anxiety symptoms in schizophrenia

•The longtitudinal relationships between anxiety symptoms and the PSP were examined.•The PSP dynamically affects the anxiety symptoms in schizophrenic patients over time.•The anxiety subscale of the SCL-90-R was validated using Rasch rating model.

BackgroundWe aimed to examine the longitudinal relationship between the personal and social functioning and anxiety symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. For this purpose, we confirmed the validity of the anxiety subscale of the Symptom-Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) and then applied the latent growth modeling method for longitudinal causal relationships.MethodsFive hundred and seventy-eight patients diagnosed with schizophrenia were evaluated and 369 patients were included in the study at baseline. After conducting Rasch model analyses for the validation of the anxiety subscale in the SCL-90-R, we applied latent growth model to determine the causal relationship between the PSP and the anxiety symptoms.ResultsThe validity of the anxiety subscale of the SCL-90-R was confirmed based on the Rasch rating model, where the criteria for Infit, Outfit, item difficulty, and point-measure correlations were satisfied. The results from the latent growth model showed that the intercept and slope (rate of change) of the PSP negatively predicted the slope of anxiety symptoms along the longitudinal trajectory. Together with previous studies examining the predictive role of anxiety symptoms on quality of life, our longitudinal findings lend evidence for bidirectional effects between quality of life and anxiety symptoms. The transactional nature of the relationship between anxiety symptoms and quality of life warrant further investigation using a longitudinal cross-lagged design.ConclusionThe anxiety subscale of the SCL-90-R may be utilized by clinicians and researcher to make inferences about quality of life in addition to assessing anxiety symptoms in patients with schizophrenia.