A case report of informal cognitive therapy of delusions by a carer: a novel treatment paradigm?

Cognitive therapy has been effectively used in the treatment of psychotic symptoms like delusions and hallucinations. Most of the work in this area has focused only on the patient. We describe a patient with schizophrenia, whose delusions were well managed by his mother using informal cognitive therapy principles. Primary carers could be more involved as 'co-therapists' in the cognitive treatment of psychotic symptoms in some patients. Future work needs to explore the effectiveness and feasibility of more structured cognitive therapy input for carers (as co-therapists) of patients with psychosis.