Prospective memory in schizophrenia: Relationship to medication management skills, neurocognition and symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia [pre-print]

Objective: Impaired adherence to medication regimens is a serious concern for individuals with schizophrenialinked to relapse and poorer outcomes. One possible reason for poor adherence to medication ispoor ability to remember future intentions, labeled prospective memory skills. It has been demonstratedin several studies that individuals with schizophrenia have impairments in prospective memory that arelinked to everyday life skills. However, there have been no studies, to our knowledge, examining therelationship of a clinical measure of prospective memory to medication management skills, a key elementof successful adherence. Methods: In this Study 41 individuals with schizophrenia and 25 healthy adultswere administered a standardized test battery that included measures of prospective memory, medicationmanagement skills, neurocognition, and symptoms. Results: Individuals with schizophrenia demonstratedimpairments in prospective memory (both time and event-based) relative to healthy controls.Performance on the test of prospective memory was correlated with the standardized measure ofmedication management in individuals with schizophrenia. Moreover, the test of prospective memorypredicted skills in medication adherence even after measures of neurocognition were accounted for.Conclusions: This suggests that prospective memory may play a key role in medication managementskills and thus should be a target of cognitive remediation programs