Comparison of Memory Deficit in Paranoid & Residual Schizophrenic patients with Normal Subjects

This research attempts to study memory deficits in paranoid and residual schizophrenic patients and compares them with normal subjects. The population consisted of all schizophrenic patients who hospitalized in Ahvaz Salamat Mental Hospital. Normal subjects were randomly selected and recruited from the staff of the same hospital. According to the formal diagnosis of patient already carried out by the hospital psychiatrists, patients were randomly allocated to either residual or paranoid sub-groups, each consisting of 20 male and 20 female subjects. In order to measure memory deficit, Wechsler Memory test (WMT) was administrated to the subjects. Data analysis revealed that the performance of normal subjects on WMT was significantly superior to that of both other groups, i.e., paranoid and residual schizophrenic patients. The comparison of normal male and female subjects with their schizophrenic counterparts indicated that the performance of normal subjects (male and female) WMT was significantly superior to that of male and female paranoid and residual schizophrenic subjects. However, the two schizophrenic groups did not differ from on another significantly