psych treatments

• Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) - aims to identify and challenge irrational thinking and beliefs, including the delusions and hallucinations of schizophrenia. It helps by showing patients how their delusions and hallucinations affect their feelings and behaviour.
• CBT lasts between 5 and 20 sessions. Individual or in groups. It will not get rid of the symptoms but equips the patient to cope better.
• Family therapy aims to improve family communication and reduce stress of living as a family.
• Pharoah et al proposed seven strategies to improve family functioning e.g reducing stress, anger and guilt in the family
• The combination of the medication and family therapy aims to reduce the likelihood of relapse and readmission to hospital.
• Family therapy improves attitudes towards schizophrenia
• Token economies - systems of secondary reinforcement used to improve the behaviour of patients by systematically rewarding desired behaviour. Tokens can be later exchanged for privileges.
• Jauhur et al (2014) reviewed the results of 34 studies of CBT for sz and concluded CBT has a significant but fairly small effect on both positive and negative symptoms.
• Psychological therapies can only help to relieve and manage symptoms but fail to cure schizophrenia
• Psychological therapies don’t have any serious side effects but they are regarded as controversial. For example token economies are more available to those who have less severe symptoms than those with more severe symptoms.