The primary function of the Chronic Schizophrenia Recruitment and Assessment Core will be to recruit and clinically assess chronic schizophrenia patients and demographically comparable normal subjects for participation in studies of the Center for Neurocognition and Emotion in Schizophrenia. By centralizing the recruitment of chronic patients in a single Core, the aim is to increase the efficiency of the process and eliminate the need for individual projects to set up redundant recruitment mechanisms. To maximize the demographic similarity of the chronic sample to the other samples in the Center, chronic schizophrenia subjects will be recruited from former participants in prior longitudinal studies of first-episode patients conducted at the Aftercare Research Program who have had their onset of illness at least five years prior to enrollment in the Center research. This Core will screen, recruit, and conduct diagnostic interviews with the potential patient subjects and the normal comparison subjects. Staff from this Core will also complete ratings of symptom severity and functional outcome (work/school, social, and independent living domains) for all chronic schizophrenia patients who participate in Center projects. In addition, this Core will facilitate and coordinate the involvement of these patient and control subjects in Center projects, including the coordination of laboratory access at UCLA. Unlike the Prodromal Research Program and the Aftercare Research Program, no treatment is provided for thes patients as part of their Center participation.
The Specific Aims of this core are to: 1) To screen and recruit patients with chronic schizophrenia from former participants of the UCLA Aftercare Program, according to locally-approved procedures, 2) To provide diagnostic interviews and clinical assessment of potential subjects for Center projects, 3) To screen, recruit, and conduct diagnostic interviews with demographically comparable normal comparison subjects. 4) To facilitate interactions between subjects to the staff of the respective Center projects, and 5) To coordinate the subjects' participation in all Center projects.
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