The Relationship Between Social Interaction and Severity of Auditory Hallucinations in Schizophrenia Patients

Wednesday, 1 August 2012

Tzu-Ting Wang, MSN, RN
Department of Nursing, Cardinal Tien College of Healthcare & Management, Taipei, Taiwan
Chiu-Yi Lin
Department of Nursing, Tri-Service General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
Chiu-Yueh Yang, PhD
School of Nursing, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to understand the relationship between social interaction and severity of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia patients

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to understand the predictors of severity of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia patients

Purpose: This is a cross-sectional, correlational study with the main purpose of exploration the relationship between social interaction and severity of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia patients.

Methods: Convenience sample was conducted in northern medical hospitals (excluding the schizophrenia cases treated in acute ward). Qualified subjects were 170 schizophrenia patients. Instruments were included three parts: demographic data, Auditory Hallucination Assessment Scale and Assessment of Communication and Interaction Skills—Chinese version (ACIS-C). The first two parts were collected by self-report, while assessment communication and social interaction was collected through individual interview with researcher or the social interaction between subjects and other patients’ by group observation. Data analysis was employed by using SPSS 17.0 to conduct descriptive statistics on mean, standard deviation, median after the data was collected. As for the inference statistics, it included t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, one way Analysis of Variance, Kruskal-Wallis test, Pearson Correlation and used multiple regression to examine the important predictable variables of severity of auditory hallucination.

Results: The research’s results are as the following: (1) The mean of communication interaction scale was 62.96. The subjects who received longer education and outpatients have better social interactions with others. (2) The mean of the subjects with severity of auditory hallucination was 54.20; they seem to be admitted to the hospital more and their auditory hallucination became worse. (3) Schizophrenia patients who have worse social interaction also have more severe auditory hallucination. (4) Physicality, information exchange and relations in communication interaction scale were important predictable factors for auditory hallucination.

Conclusion: This research suggests nursing staffs should adopt more effective inursing interventions to enhance patients’ social interaction ability to alleviate the severity of auditory hallucination.