Further Exploration of Personal and Social Functioning: The Role of Interpersonal Violence, Service Engagement, and Social Network

Social functioning (SF) has mainly been studied in major psychoses in relation to symptom severity, but other factors may interfere with the achievement of a functional remission. The aim of this study is to explore interpersonal violence (IV), service engagement (SE), and social network (SN), together with demographics, as predictors of SF in a sample of subjects with severe mental illness (SMI). Consecutive adult inpatients were evaluated using self-report and clinician-rated questionnaires. Findings suggest that IV, SE, SN, male sex, and illness duration explained 39.1% of SF variance in people affected by SMI. IV was the strongest predictor, followed by sex and duration of illness. Lifetime expression of violence is a stronger predictor than lifetime exposure to violence. Positive SE and SN were found to predict SF, whereas age was not associated. This study underlines the need of other non-symptom-related variables for the comprehension of SF in mental disorders.