Assessing thought disorder in patients with schizophrenia

Copyright 2016 Via Medica.Thought disorder (TD) is one of the main symptom clusters of schizophrenia. Most of the researchers approached psychotic speech as the reflection of impairment in thought processes and asserted that disorganized thought emerged as disorganized speech. This approach seeks to measure language elements that are believed to reflect TD elements. On the other hand, linguistic perspective suggests that disorganized speech is the result of cognitive impairments related to the ability of organization of language and seeks to investigate features of language structure relevant to those impairments. As it is difficult to describe TD in a subjective way and in order to increase the reliability of assessing TD, objective language impairments emerging during speech and communication are agreed to be concentrated on. In this review, we aimed to provide a summary of scales used widely for the assessment of TD in patients with schizophrenia