Psychological therapy:

Cards (5)

  • CBT:
    CBT can help a client make sense of how their irrational cognitions (such as delusions and hallucinations) 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 client hears voices and believes the voices represent demonic forces, they will naturally be very afraid
    • 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
  • CBT:
    • Doesn't eliminate symptoms of schizo but can make people better able to cope with them
    • Reduces distress and improves ability to function adequately
    • People hearing voices can be helped by teaching them that voice-hearing is an extension of the ordinary experience of thinking in words called normalisation
    • Delusions are challenged ie by a process of reality testing where the person with schizo 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
  • Family therapy
    Takes place with families as well as the identified patient (a term used in family therapy which describes one member of a dysfunctional family who expresses the family's conflicts)
    • Aims to improve the quality of communication and interaction between family members. There is a range of approaches to family therapy for schizophrenia
  • How family therapy helps
    Pharoah et al identified a range of strategies that family therapists use to improve the functioning of a family that has a member with schizophrenia
  • Family therapy
    Pharoah
    1. Reduces negative emotions
    • Aims to reduce levels of expressed emotion ie reduce the level of emotion generally but especially negative emotions ie anger which create stress
    • Reducing stress is important to reduce the likelihood of relapse
    2. Improves the family's ability to help
    • Encourages family to form a therapeutic alliance whereby they all agree on the aims of therapy
    • Improve families' beliefs about and behaviour towards schizo
    • Aim to ensure that family members achieve a balance between caring for the individual with schizo and maintaining their own lives