Elevated Disgust Proneness in Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder hardly investigated with regard to habitual disgust. We compared disgust propensity, trait anger, trait anxiety and disgust sensitivity in 69 patients with schizophrenia, 68 depressive patients and 70 mentally healthy controls. Patients with schizophrenia reported more pronounced overall disgust propensity than healthy individuals. Whereas food-related disgust was crucial for schizophrenia, depressed patients experienced elevated death-related disgust. Females reported greater disgust proneness than males. Both patient groups showed higher trait anxiety and trait anger than controls. Depressive patients additionally reported elevated anger expression and even higher anger suppression than the schizophrenia group. We found a positive relationship between disgust proneness and disgust sensitivity in controls and patients. The importance of disorder-specific disgust domains is discussed. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 66:1090-1100, 2010.