CBT

• The aims of CBT are to help clients identify irrational thoughts, for example delusions and hallucinations, and try to change them in 5 to 20 sessions. Clients are helped to make sense of how their delusions and hallucinations impact on their feelings and behaviour. For example, the client hears voices and believes it's demons, so is scared.
• CBT helps make it better to cope with symptoms and tackles the anxiety and depression that results from schizophrenia. The doctor will say something like, there could be another explanation, resulting in normalisation where they explain to the client that hearing voices is normal for people with schizophrenia.
• CBT key terms: rationalisation, normalisation and reality testing
• A weakness of psychological therapies is that they are reductionist. They only focus on psychological aspects and not biological. Biological treatments work, such as chlorpromazine and risperidone. It may be that they worked better paired together, shown by Tarrier et al to provide a more holistic method of support.
• A strength of CBT as a treatment is that there is research to support that it is effective. Jauhara et al. reviewed 34 studies of CBT for schizophrenia and concluded that there is evidence for its effectiveness. They reviewed 34 studies of CBT and concluded that CBT has a significant but small effect on both positive and negative symptoms. This supports the role of CBT for treating schizophrenia. When compared to standard care, CBT is more effective paired with medication in social functioning.
• A weakness of CBT is that it can be time-consuming. CBT requires 5 to 20 sessions, meaning there is a higher chance of people dropping out, leading to higher attrition rates for CBT. This means they will relapse quicker.