Psychological Therapies For Schizophrenia

Psychological Therapies

• Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy
  
• People often have distorted beliefs which influence their bhaviour in maladaptive ways.
• Delusions are thought to result from faulty interpretations of events. CBT helps identify and correct these.
• CBT Techniques
• Patients are encouraged to trace back the origins of their symptons in order to get a better idea of how they developed.
• Encouraged to evaluate the content of their delusions. 
• May test validity of faulty beliefs. 
• Behavioural assignments may also be set with the aim of improving their general level of functioning.
• The therapist lets the patient develop their own alternatives to these previous maladaptive beliefs by looking for alternative explanations and coping strategies, already present in the patients mind.
• Outcome Studies
• Measure how well a patinet does after a particular treatment, compared with the accepted form of treatment compared with accepted form of treatment. 
• Patients recieving CBT experience fewer positive effects than those on atypical antipsychotics alone. 
• 25-50% reduction in recovery time for patients given a combination of antipsychotics and CBT. 
• These advantages were confirmed.
• Psychodynamic Therapy: Psychoanalysis
• Based on the assumption that individuals are often unaware of the influence of unconscious conflicts on their current psycholgoical state.
• Helps to bring unconscious to the conscious mind. Assumes that the symptons are meaningful and part of history for the patient
• Psychodynamic Techniques
• Therapist makes an alliance with patient, offering them real help. \The more severe, the more support is needed by the therapist 
• Freud believed that schizophrenics could not be analysed because they…