Cognitive Deficits in Adolescents With Schizophrenia Undergoing Antipsychotic Treatment

To the Editor: John T. Kenny, M.D., and colleagues (1) reported that adolescent schizophrenic patients showed neuropsychological deficits. Although they indicate that all patients were treated with antipsychotic drugs, they did not specify dosage. Thus, cognitive impairment might be linked to the antipsychotics’ side effects such as sedation, attention and motivation impairments, and mild extrapyramidal effects manifesting themselves as a slowing down in the completion of some testing tasks. These possible side effects cast doubt on the interpretation of the neuropsychological test results. It would seem premature to advance the pessimistic assertion that there are cognitive deficits in adolescents with schizophrenia.