Psychological therapy for Schizophrenia

• Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - Can be used to treat schizophrenia over a period of 5-20 sessions. Helps with understanding thoughts and behaviours. eg. if therapist can convince them that the voice actually comes from the malfunctioning speech centre in their own brain and that it cannot hurt them if they ignore it. This is much less frightening.
• Cognitive behaviour therapy does not eliminate symptoms but allows coping.
• What is normalisation in CBT?


  Teaching patients that voice hearing and delusions are an extension of ordinary experiences
• Family therapy - Psychological therapy carried out with all or some members of a family with the aim to improve quality of communication.
• Pharoah (2010) - identified a range of strategies family therapists use. found it reduces negative emotions such as guilt and stress.
• Family therapy improves the family's ability to help as they are encouraged to form therapeutic alliance whereby they all agree on the aims of therapy and improve the beliefs about schizophrenia.
• Family therapy also helps reach a balance between caring for schizophrenic individuals and maintaining their own lives.
• A model of practice was proposed by Burbach (2018) for working with families with schizophrenia. It begins with basic information sharing and providing emotional support.
• Phase 2 of Burbachs model of practice consists of identifying resources including what family members can offer. Phase 3 consists of encouraging mutual understanding and creating a safe space.
• Phase 4 of Burbachs models consists of identifying unhelpful patterns of interaction.
• In phase 5, Burbach proposes that the therapist encourages the family to identify goals and develop plans to achieve them. In phase 6, the therapist works with the family to implement these changes.