Psychological therapies for schizophrenia

Psychological Therapies for Schizophrenia (Sz)

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Aims to modify hallucinations and delusions

Administered every 10 days for about 12 sessions to identify and alter irrational thinking

CBT use drawings to make a link between the patient’s thoughts, actions and emotions to comprehend where symptoms originate from and helps alleviate anxiety levels.

Techniques:

Stress management

Patients can often identify the triggers and precursors to the onset of psychotic symptoms. They can also develop their own copying strategies.

The patient and therapist work together to develop more effective coping strategies.

For example:

·         Create distractions from intrusive thoughts/ challenging their meaning

·         Forming breathing and other relaxation techniques

·         Drowning out hallucinatory voice by shouting or turning the volume of the radio up

J 73 of Tarrier’s patients reported that these strategies helped. From this the Coping Strategy Enhancement (CSE) was developed.

J Tarrier also did a study and found significant improvements in positive symptoms

X-however 45% of patients either refused to cooperate or dropped out= validity? Reliability?

Rational Emotive Behavioural therapy (REBT)

This aims to challenge irrational and negative beliefs and generate more realistic explanations.

Patients are also taught their emotional volatility and muscle relaxation techniques to detect gradual anger build-ups

Chadwick- asked Sz patients to predict the outcome of 50 scenarios when watching a video. The patient was unable to predict the outcome of any…