Psychological therapies for sz

• (+) CBT/family therapy - evidence for its effectiveness

  pharaoh, family therapy - moderate evidence to show it has sig red hospital readmissions over the course of a yr and improves quality of life for patients + families. Jauhar, CBT - reviewed 34 studies, concluded CBT had sig but fairly small effect on both -ve and positive symptomsbut these results were also inconsistent and their problems with the quality if some evidence. overall - only modest support for the effectiveness of psychological treatments and sz remains one of the harder mental health problems to treat - limitation
• (+) improve the quality of life of the patient and make sz more manageable


  CBT - allows patients to make sense of their symptoms and challenge them. Family therapy - red stress of living with sz in a family, for patient and family. token economy - make patients behaviour more socially acceptable so that they can better re-integrate into society. psychological treatments can however be seen as a weakness as they fail to cure sz, only red its severity. it was. also found from a meta-analysis that CBT was no better than a placebo, therefore having no value in sz
• (-) ethically questionable - token economies and CBT

  token economies - mild symptoms = more privileges, less to those with more severe symptoms as their symptoms prevent them from doing more desirable behaviours (more severely ill patients suffer discrimination). CBT challenges the paranoia but at what point does it interfere with an individuals freedom of thought. there are other therapies that are helpful but not unethical like art therapy so this is a limitation
• (-) evidence for its effectiveness is limited in scope and the quality of this evidence can be questioned


  Many small-scale studies where mental health professionals have compared patients before and after psychological treatments have found more positive results than those described above, but they lack a control groups or patients not randomly allocated or not in controlled conditions. conclusions of these studies are generally more optimistic than those that are strictly controlled. other way - tightly controlled studies = pessimistic