Self-stigma and suicide risk mediates the associations of inattention/impulsivity symptoms with psychological distress and quality of life among people with schizophrenia

Nguyen, TTT, Soraci, P, Huang, H-W, Chen, Y-L, Huang, Y-T, Pisanti, R, Chang, K-C, Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524 and Lin, C-Y, 2026. Self-stigma and suicide risk mediates the associations of inattention/impulsivity symptoms with psychological distress and quality of life among people with schizophrenia. Quality of Life Research, 35 (5): 125. ISSN 0962-9343

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Abstract

Purpose: The present study examined whether self-stigma mediated the associations from inattention/impulsivity symptoms and suicide risk to psychological distress and quality of life (QoL) among individuals with schizophrenia.

Methods: A longitudinal study was conducted comprising 241 individuals with schizophrenia who were recruited from daycare and outpatient units in Southern Taiwan. Eligible participants were adults (≥ 20 years) diagnosed with schizophrenia and enrolled in a daycare program or receiving regular outpatient follow-up. After providing informed consent, participants were interviewed to assess self-stigma, inattention and impulsivity symptoms, suicide risk, psychological distress, and QoL. Individuals with a history of moderate to severe substance use disorder (except tobacco use disorder) or head injury were excluded.

Results: Self-stigma mediated the relationships between inattention and impulsivity symptoms and both psychological distress and QoL among Taiwanese individuals with schizophrenia. More specifically, the indirect effect of inattention and impulsivity symptoms at Time 1 (T1) on each QoL domain (physical, psychological, social, and environment QoL at T3 through self-stigma at T2 was significant (β = − 0.05 to − 0.03, p < 0.05). The indirect effect on psychological distress at T3 was also significant (β = 0.06, 95% CI [0.01, 0.12], p = 0.019). In addition, self-stigma at T1 significantly predicted each QoL domain (β = − 0.19 to − 0.13, p < 0.001) and psychological distress at T3 (β = 0.24, 95% CI [1.94, 4.10], p < 0.001) through self-stigma at T2.

Conclusion: The present study demonstrated the robust influence of self-stigma in increasing psychological distress and poor QoL in each specific domain, suggesting clinical approaches are needed for managing self-stigma, inattention and impulsivity symptoms, and suicide risk among individuals with schizophrenia.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Quality of Life Research
Creators:	Nguyen, T.T.T., Soraci, P., Huang, H.-W., Chen, Y.-L., Huang, Y.-T., Pisanti, R., Chang, K.-C., Griffiths, M.D. and Lin, C.-Y.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	May 2026
Volume:	35
Number:	5
ISSN:	0962-9343
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s11136-026-04240-w DOI 2602706 Other
Rights:	© the author(s) 2026. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	08 Apr 2026 10:18
Last Modified:	08 Apr 2026 10:18
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/55509

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