S36. TREATING NEGATIVE SYMPTOMS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA WITH A MOTIVE-SPECIFIC INTERVENTION: A RANDOMIZED BRIEF INTERVENTION TRIAL

Abstract Background Motivational deficits seem to be one of the main barriers in the recovery process among psychosis patients and have been shown to be very treatment resistant. Motives are conscious and unconscious affect-based needs that influence behavior toward specific incentives. Thus, they constitute the basis of motivated behavior or the lack thereof. In this study, we investigated how individual differences in social motives relate to the phenomenology of motivational negative symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Methods Fifty-nine patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were included into the sample. Negative symptoms were measured with the Brief Negative Symptom Scale and social motives with the Questionnaire for the Zurich Model of Social Motivation. Between-group differences, Pearson correlations and regression analysis were calculated. We replicated and extended the results in a second sample of forty-five psychosis patients, using the same methods. Results A comparison of healthy controls and schizophrenia patients revealed significant differences in social motives. Within the patient group, relationships between the characteristics of the individual motives, in particular the achievement motive, and the severity of the motivational negative symptoms, i.e. of asociality, avolition and anhedonia, could be described. In contrast, social motives cannot be associated with diminished expression, the non-motivational dimension of negative symptoms. The duration of the disease seems to be an additional influencing factor: When comparing the motivational dispositions of first episode patients with those of healthy people, no differences were found. However, a relationship between the duration of the disease and the characteristics of social motives can be described. Discussion Explicit social motives stand in a relationship with motivational negative symptoms. Since implicit and explicit motives may diverge, the aim of our future research is to additionally investigate the association with implicit motives. The inclusion of psychological factors helps to extend and improve psychotherapeutic interventions for psychosis patients. Since negative symptoms do not respond well to pharmacotherapy, further efforts in this direction are needed to understand the underlying mechanisms of this disease and to develop effective psychotherapy tools in the future.