Cards (9)

  • Cognitive behaviour therapy based on cognitive and behavioural techniques
    te therapy aims to deal with thinking such as challenging negative thoughts
  • Cognitive behaviour therapy is commonly used to treat people with schizophrenia.
    It usually takes place over a period of 5-20 sessions
    either in groups or on an individual basis.
  • CBT can help make a cline make sense of how their irrational cognitions impact on their feelings and behaviour
    Just understanding where symptoms come from can be hugely helpful for those with symptoms like auditory hallucinations. 
  • If a 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 and hence less debilitating.
    This will not eliminate the symptoms of schizophrenia but it can make people better able to cope with them.
    This in turn reduces their distress and improves their ability to function adequately.
  • People hearing voices can also be helped by teaching them that voice-hearing is an extension of the ordinary experience of thinking in words, this is called normalisation. 
  • Delusions can also be challenged, for example by a process of reality testing in which the person with schizophrenia and their therapist jointly examine the likelihood that beliefs are true.
    in some cases where delusions are resistant to reality testing CBT can still be used to tackle the anxiety and depression that result from living with schizophrenia.
  • A strength of CBT for schizophrenia is the evidence for its effectiveness.
    review of 34 studies of using CBT with schizophrenia, concluded that there is clear evidence for small but significant effects on both positive and negative symptoms.
    Clinical advice from NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, recommends CBT for schizophrenia.
    This means that both research and clinical experience support the benefits of CBT for schizophrenia.
  • A limitation of CBT for schizophrenia is the wide range of techniques and symptoms included in studies.
    CBT techniques and schizophrenia symptoms vary widely from one case to another.
    different studies have involved the use of different CBT techniques and people with different combinations of positive and negative symptoms. The overall modest benefits of CBT for schizophrenia probably conceal a wide variety of effects of different CBT techniques on different symptoms.
    This makes it hard to say how effective CBT will be for a particular person with schizophrenia.
  • A limitation is CBT may improve the quality of life for people with schizophrenia but not actually 'cure' them.
    As schizophrenia appears to be largely a biological condition we would expect that a psychological therapy like CBT just benefits people by improving their ability to live with schizophrenia.
    On the other hand studies report significant reductions in the severity of both positive and negative symptoms. This suggests that CBT does more than enhance coping.