Erzin, A. I. Personal Predicates of Proactivity of Patients Suffering From Paranoid Schizophrenia

Abstract: The author of the article views proactivity as a stable characteristic of mature personality. When it is normal, proactivity is presented as self-determined behavior, willingness to make active influence on the environment and life circumstances, ability to predict certain events, to set personally important goals and try to achieve them. The author studies personal determinants of proactive (i.e. self-determined) behavior of people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. The author specifies that the following factors decrease or destruct proactivity of the patients: disadaptive stereotypes in the sphere of interpersonal communication and deficit of life-meaning orientations (including feeling satisfied only about current events, reduced ability to set long-term goals, absence of the feeling of control over one’s life and low internal control). The author also shows the role of delusionary symptoms in distorting patterns of proactive behavior when a patient is sick with schizophrenia and has tendencies towards avoidance of social contacts and autism. The majority of the listed above features correlate to low praoctivity which, in its turn, has a negative impact on the level of social functioning of patients. The author suggests that we should view the above mentioned problems as targets of the psychotherapeutic process aimed at restoration of social and cognitive functions of patients suffering from schizophrenia.

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