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Assessment of cognitive function with MMSE in chronic schizophrenic inpatients

Background

In the frame of psychiatric reform, the private sector has developed and adapted in the direction of new data of benefits of psychiatric care. The interaction of the chronicity of the disease with prolonged of the hospitalization has damaged effects on cognitive function.

Materials and methods

Cognitive function was assessed with MMSE. A protocol registered clinicodemografic characteristics and other relevant patient data. (average time from first appearance of schizophrenia, marital status, duration of hospitalization, educational level, support from familiar environment, average duration of schizophrenic disorder).

Results

Men: MMSE score ranged from 17 to 28 (mean 24,2 little above the 24 that is considered cut off point for this test. Women: MMSE score ranged from 19 to 30 (mean 22,93 under the cut off point).

Conclusions

For the patients included in the study, the exterior stimuli are minimal, their daily activities are limited and their interactions and capacity for communication and expresing feeling are practically null. An important problem is the legal capacity of patients. We believe that is necessary to create new scales to estimate the ability of having lawful acts and not consider these patients incompetents just because they did not achieve the expected results in only one test, as the widespread MMSE.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Arapidis, K., Rafu-Arapidi, G., Taratsidou, I. et al. Assessment of cognitive function with MMSE in chronic schizophrenic inpatients. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S215 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S215

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S215

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