Psychological interventions for schizophrenia

Abstract

This review examines the impact of dynamic and supportive psychotherapies (both individual and group) and psychosocial skills training on clinical and social outcomes for individuals with schizophrenia. The relatively few controlled trials of individual or group psychotherapies for persons with schizophrenia exhibit serious methodological problems that limit their generalizability. Reality-oriented approaches appear to be superior to dynamic, insight-oriented psychotherapies, but further research is needed to identify and evaluate disorder-specific models that target specific deficits and disabilities in schizophrenia. Research on psychosocial skills training models shows that target skills can be trained and maintained over time. Further work is needed to determine the extent to which trained skills generalize from the original training setting to "real life" environments.