Cognitive, motivational and value-meaningful factors of proactivity in the first episode of schizophrenia
The issue of personal factors in case of mental pathology is traditional for abnormal psychology and psychiatry. In the last decade, researchers have identified proactivity as one of these factors. Proactivity is treated as an important condition of adaptability and adequate social functioning. Being a complex psychological construct, proactivity was originally considered within a framework of V. Frankl's logoanalysis and later became a subject of social psychology. Nowadays, is actively used in clinical-psychological research as an important protective formation. The deficit of proactivity components that reflects the level of personality's selfdetermination is observed in a wide range of mental pathology including early stages of a schizophrenic process. The goal of our study is to investigate some cognitive, motivational and value-meaningful factors of proactivity in patients with schizophrenia who suffered from the first psychotic seizure. The study involved 79 patients including 49 men and 30 women (mean age in 23.1). The patients corresponded to the paranoid variant of the complex of schizophrenic pathopsychological syndromes and were taken to a psychiatric clinic for the first time. The study has shown that in case of the first episode of schizophrenia, proactivity often has a partial defect: particular cognitive components (self-reflection, anticipation) are severely decreased, while its meta-motivational components often remain preserved. The general level of proactivity correlates with such characteristics of the cognitive sphere as indirect memorization, semantic memory, resilience of attention, and tempo of mental activity. The sphere of motivation is associated with such need tendencies as aggression, self-justification, avoidance of danger and failures, and need for understanding and support. The sphere of patients' life-purpose orientations is distinguished by the lack of clear purposes in life, conviction that it is not subject of conscious control and lack of belief in the freedom of choice. Therefore, the results show that proactivity decreases at the early stages of schizophrenia. This decrease can be considered within a framework of negative symptoms and neurocognitive deficit and, in most cases, as a consequence of pathological changes of personality. Timely rehabilitation of impaired and preserved components of proactivity may have prognostic value, since it enables to reveal the targets of psychological correction and psychotherapy in case of this illness. Besides, it enables to develop a perspective area of rehabilitation.