Abstract
The purpose of the study was to assess the level of executive functioning between two psychiatric disorders; schizophrenia and bipolar. It was hypothesized that executive functioning will be more impaired in patients with schizophrenia as compared to patients with bipolar disorder. The sample comprised of 120 participants; including 60 individuals with schizophrenia and 60 with bipolar disorder. The ages of the participants ranged between 18 to 35 years. In order to collect data the purposive sampling method was used. A demographic information form was used to determine the pre-requisite information and selection criteria for the research. To assess the executive functioning, cognitive symptoms checklist (CSC) was used. The data was collected from different psychiatric hospitals in Karachi city. For the statistical analysis, a t- test was computed to find out the difference between the two groups. Results indicate significant difference between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder patients [t = 4.059, df = 118, p < 0.05]. Moreover mean scores showing more impairment in executive functioning among the schizophrenic patients (M = 26.05) as compared to patients with bipolar disorder (M = 14.17).