Furthermore, there were gender differences in both the experimental and control groups; both healthy and schizophrenic and healthy women outperformed men in verbal learning and memory. While the findings reaffirmed the researchers' expectations, the research could have some implications for future research as well as treatment for schizophrenics. It is worth noting that the patients with schizophrenia, despite being considered stable, showed significant impairment vs. The control group. The researchers believe that these differences could indicate that schizophrenia is more than the symptoms that manifest, but is more of an underlying cognitive disorder. Moreover because the impairment exists even in stable patients, they believe that this cognitive disorder is resistant to the current treatments for schizophrenia. However, there are two things that make these results questionable. First, there was a difference in educational level between the control and experimental groups, which may have contributed to differences in cognitive functioning. In addition, all of the experimental subjects were on antipsychotic medications, which means it is impossible to know whether these cognitive differences are due to the schizophrenia or the medication.
Surprisingly, the researchers showed that schizophrenia impacted the cognitive functioning of males and females in the same way; while there were gender differences, those differences existed in the control group, as well....
They did suggest that these differences in cognitive functioning may be why women tend to have a better treatment outcome than men, because schizophrenia is known for how it impacts the patient's interactions with the outside world. From a cognitive perspective, this could mean that women are simply less likely to be as significantly impacted by the disease. However, there are other gender differences in the disease, such as the fact that women are likely to be older at the time of onset, and these differences may also help explain different outcomes.
Perhaps the most significant impact of this research is that it demonstrates that men and women, because of the innate gender-based differences in healthy brains, may respond to mental illness and its treatment differently. This is an important factor because understanding those differences may be the key to improving treatment outcomes for particular diseases. One would assume that future researchers will be more cognizant of possible gender-based differences and look to see if the differences in people with an illness appear to reflect the same differences one would see in a healthy population.
References
Bozikas, V., Kosmidis, M., Peltekis, a., Giannakou, M., Nimatoudis, I., Karavatos, a., Fokas,
K., & Garyfallos, G. (2010). Sex differences in neuropsychological functioning among schizophrenia patients. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 44, 333-341.
