Psychological Treatments - AO3

• CBT


  May improve the quality of life for people with schizophrenia but not actually 'cure' them
• Schizophrenia appears to be largely a biological condition
• Psychological therapy like CBT

  Benefits people by improving their ability to live with schizophrenia
• How CBT benefits people with schizophrenia

  • Enhances the ability of an individual to ignore auditory hallucinations and so experience less anxiety
• CBT does more than enhance coping, it can reduce the frequency and intensity of hallucinations as well as the anxiety associated with them
• CBT may be a partial cure for schizophrenia
• Limitations of psychological treatments of schizophrenia

  • Real life applications are limited
  • Ending treatment is common due to the length of the treatment, therefore the effectiveness is reduced
  • Symptoms may become severe in this time
  • Require engagement, but negative symptoms can lead to an unwillingness to take part, and positive symptoms may lead to a distrust in the process
  • Do not treat the symptoms directly, they aim to help the patient to manage these more effectively
• There is study evidence to support that psychological therapies do work and are effective when treating Schizophrenia
• Understanding the individual and what therapy/treatment plan may work best for them in terms of the symptoms they are displaying, would be more beneficial in terms of effectiveness
• Limitation of psychological treatments of schizophrenia

  • They ignore the nature debate
  • Suggest schizophrenia is caused by factors in the environment and faulty thought patterns
  • Ignore that schizophrenia is a result of an imbalance in neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin
• There is only modest support for the effectiveness of psychological treatments, which implies that there must be a biological/genetic factor
• An interactionist approach in terms of treatment combining both drug and psychological therapies could be more effective when treating symptoms of schizophrenia