ABSTRACT
Objective:To explore the effect of group psychotherapy on damage of theory of mind (TOM) in patients with early-onset schizophrenia.Methods:Totally 60 patients with early-onset schizophrenia were included and divided into the intervention group (n ＝ 30) and the health education group (n ＝ 30).The patients in the intervention group were offered 10 twice a week 2-hour sessions of group psychotherapy,and those in the control were offered group health education twice a week.All participants completed baseline measures and post-intervention measures with the Eye Emotion Recognition and Theory of mind Picture-sequencing Task (TOM-PST).Results:Totally 23 patients in the intervention group and 29 patients in the health education group finished the post-intervention measures.After 5-week intervention,subscores of sad and fear and total score of emotion recognition,total score of TOM-PST,understanding first order error belief,second order error belief,third order error belief,sense of reality,detecting fraud compared to baseline had statistically significant difference in intervention group.In health education group,subscores of joy emotion recognition,understanding first order error belief,third order error belief,total score of TOM-PST compared to baseline had statstically significant difference.The patients with group psychotherapy got higher scores of total score of TOM-PST and understanding second order error belief and third order error belief than the health education group after 5-week intervention (P ＜ 0.05).Conclusion:This study suggests the group psychotherapy could partially improve theory of mind with early-onset schizophrenia,and promote the recovery of social cognition.