Lack of empathy: a specific symptom of schizophrenia?

Abstract

Empathy is defined as the individual's ability to react to the experiences of others. Research on empathy in mental illness is limited. Autism and classical psychopathy have been most studied. We had two objectives: to analyze empathy in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (SCH) and to compare with patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). We assessed 90 subjects (30 SCH, 30 BPD and 30 healthy controls) using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The results manifested that both PE and BPD had lower levels of empathy than healthy controls, without differences between the two groups of patients. The empathic deficit is due to the cognitive component of empathy, while the emotional component is not modified. This deficit does not permit differentiation between SCH and BPD, which would support the hypothesis that BPD would be an attenuated form of schizophrenia.