Psychosocial treatments for schizophrenia.

As indicated in recent treatment guidelines, psychosocial treatments play a critical role in the rehabilitation of schizophrenia patients. During the past few years, novel psychosocial treatments have emerged expanding the scope of successful outcomes and designed to address the specific deficits inherent in schizophrenia. This paper provides a brief description and evaluate the efficacy of five new emerging psychosocial treatments for schizophrenia. There is strong evidence for the efficacy of supported employment programs and family therapy, especially those involving multiple family interactions. Although schizophrenia patients appear to derive benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy, no evidence supports it superiority over that of other individual psychotherapies. The trials of cognitive remediation to date have been largely unsuccessful, although new innovative approaches continue to be tested. Finally, substance use treatment specifically designed to address the deficits in schizophrenia patients have been formulated, which are supported by optimistic pilot data and awaiting the completion of on-going clinical trials.

Family treatment and medication dosage reduction in schizophrenia: effects on patient social functioning, family attitudes, and burden.

The effects of 2 family intervention programs (supportive family management [SFM], including monthly support groups for 2 years; or applied family management [AFM], including 1 year of behavioral family therapy plus support groups for 2 years), and 3 different neuroleptic dosage strategies (standard, low, targeted) on social functioning of patients with schizophrenia. their relatives' attitudes, and family burden were examined. AFM was associated with lower rejecting attitudes by relatives toward patients and less friction in the family perceived by patients. Patients in both AFM and SFM improved in social functioning but did not differ, whereas family burden was unchanged. Medication strategy had few effects, nor did it interact with family intervention. The addition of time-limited behavioral family therapy to monthly support groups improved family atmosphere, but did not influence patient social functioning or family burden.

Treating substance abuse in schizophrenia. An initial report.

Schizophrenia patients show alarmingly high rates of substance use disorders. These patients experience neurocognitive and social deficits that make it difficult for them to benefit from effective treatment strategies designed for less-impaired populations. Previously, we described Behavioral Treatment for Substance Abuse in Schizophrenia and discussed how the program was adapted for this population. Here we provide an update of BTSAS, discuss our clinical experience running the intervention, and review how it has changed over five years of development. We present attendance, participation, and substance use data on patients who consented to attend (n = 42), completed (n=14), and dropped out (n = 14) of the program. Outcome data are provided for 14 patients, and comparisons are made between good (n = 5; > or = 67% of urine tests clean from a goal drug over 6 months) and poor (n = 9; < or = 66% of urine tests clean) progress patients. Implications for the treatment are discussed.

Generalization of training effects in schizophrenia.

The primary goal of this study was to investigate transfer of training (generalization) in patients with schizophrenia. We randomly assigned 33 schizophrenia subjects to one of three conditions: training on the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST-T), training on the Halstead Category Test (CAT-T), or no training (No-T). The WCST and CAT were administered to all subjects at baseline. Subjects in the WCST-T and CAT-T groups then received training on the respective test, while the No-T group received additional untrained trials. All participants were subsequently retested on the WCST and CAT, and completed a brief neuropsychological battery. As hypothesized, the WCST-T and CAT-T groups exhibited large improvements on the trained test and moderate improvement on the untrained test, while the No-T group failed to show improvement on either test. These results suggest that the training paradigm did produce generalization, and that the changes were not due to practice effects. The extent of generalization across both training groups was strongly associated with neuropsychological test performance (Spearman's rho=0.56, P<0.05). The implications of these findings for rehabilitation programs were discussed, and recommendations were made for future research.

Drug-use behavior and correlates in people with schizophrenia.

This study examined how illicit drugs were accessed, reasons for drug use, prevalence of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, psychiatric symptomatology, level of functioning, and the relationship of these factors to substance use in 25 schizophrenia outpatients. To identify unique substance-use behaviors or correlates, this information was compared to 25 substance-abusing outpatients with major affective disorders, and 30 people with schizophrenia alone. Patients largely financed their drug habits with money given by immediate family members, and reported using drugs primarily for social reasons. While all three groups reported high levels of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, a relationship between emotional abuse and substance use was observed only for people with schizophrenia. There were no differences between the two schizophrenia groups in psychiatric symptoms or level of functioning. The treatment implications of these findings are discussed.

Interpersonal control and expressed emotion in families of persons with schizophrenia: change over time.

This study examined communication patterns in 62 families of persons with schizophrenia, comparing families with relatives who were low expressed emotion (EE) at the beginning and end of a 2-year study, those who were high EE at the beginning and end, and those whose EE status changed. Interaction was coded with the Relational Control Coding System and analyzed as a Markov process. Dialogues in the stable low-EE and stable high-EE families were rather similar initially, and both groups showed increasing flexibility at year 1. However, at year 2, low-EE dyads showed increasingly complex structure and flexibility in control, but high-EE dyads showed simpler structure and rigidly controlling patterns. When EE status changed, so did the structure of the dialogues and the patterning of control. Although earlier research found more "tightly joined" systems in families of high-EE relatives, it may be that over time, these family members distance from each other and so are less connected. It is also possible that relatives who remain high EE despite intervention are a subset of high-EE relatives who need more support or different therapeutic approaches to maintain change.

Effects of behavioural family management on family communication and patient outcomes in schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Family interventions for schizophrenia have proved to be highly effective in preventing relapse, but it is not clear how they work or how they should be structured. AIMS: To examine the effects of a behavioural family intervention and a family support programme on communication, problem solving and outcome in order to determine the impact of structured communication training. METHOD: Patients and family members participating in the Treatment Strategies in Schizophrenia study were videotaped engaging in 10-minute problem-solving conversations at baseline and after the conclusion of the family intervention. Tapes were subsequently evaluated for changes in communication patterns. RESULTS: The intensive behavioural intervention did not produce differential improvement in communication, and change in communication was unrelated to patient outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: The data suggest that intensive behavioural family interventions may not be cost efficient, and that change in family communication patterns may only be important for a subset of families.

Sex differences in illness presentation, course, and level of functioning in substance-abusing schizophrenia patients.

Studies of gender differences in schizophrenia have concluded that women experience a more benign form of the illness than men as evidenced by later age of illness onset, less debilitating psychiatric symptomatology, fewer psychiatric hospitalizations, and better premorbid and overall functioning. Little research, however, has focused on documenting the potential negative impact of substance use on these clinical outcomes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate gender differences in the effects of substance use on the course and presentation of schizophrenia. Two groups of schizophrenia outpatients were evaluated: 34 with substance-use disorders and 33 with no history of substance-use disorders. Sex comparisons were conducted on rates of current psychiatric symptoms, age of onset, number of previous hospitalizations and ratings of general level of functioning. The results suggest that the more benign course and presentation of illness ordinarily seen in women with schizophrenia become muted when they use substances. The data further suggest that women may be especially vulnerable to the adverse effects of substance use. Collectively, these findings highlight the need for additional research and the development of more effective treatment interventions for this population of women.

Women with schizophrenia and co-occurring substance use disorders: an increased risk for violent victimization and HIV.

Women with serious mental illnesses are at risk for victimization and HIV. Schizophrenia related neurocognitive and social competency deficits exacerbated by the effects of substance abuse may make women with schizophrenia particularly vulnerable. Information processing deficits may impair the ability to identify situations or interpersonal cues signaling danger, and make it difficult to remember and hence avoid, situations, people, or places previously proven dangerous. Social competency deficits interfere with the ability to form lasting relationships, negotiate out of dangerous situations, refuse unreasonable requests, and effectively problem solve. Given the potential increased vulnerability of this population to these negative outcomes, empirically based manualized preventive interventions are greatly needed.

Cognitive rehabilitation for schizophrenia: problems, prospects, and strategies.

Increasing awareness of the importance of neurocognitive impairments in schizophrenia has fostered considerable interest in the prospects for cognitive rehabilitation. Nevertheless, optimism has outpaced progress. We first review recent literature on the central assumptions that underlie cognitive rehabilitation, including the hypothesis that cognitive deficits play a central role in social disability and other problems schizophrenia patients experience in daily living, and that these impairments must be rectified if we are to achieve effective rehabilitation. We next discuss developments in knowledge about the neurobiology of schizophrenia that bear on the potential for cognitive rehabilitation and the selection of appropriate targets for intervention. Third, we propose a new research strategy for investigating cognitive functioning in schizophrenia and for examining the relationship of cognitive deficits to role functioning in the community: examining patients who have good vocational outcomes in order to identify strengths or compensatory factors that compensate for core deficits. We present new data that lend support to our proposed approach. We next discuss putative limits to cognitive rehabilitation based on data documenting cognitive deficits in healthy siblings and parents. Finally, we briefly describe an interim rehabilitation strategy that minimizes the load on cognitive processes rather than attempting to improve cognitive functioning.

Treating substance abuse among patients with schizophrenia.

Although substance abuse has reached epidemic proportions among people with schizophrenia, relatively little is known about the critical elements of effective treatment of substance abuse in this population. The authors discuss common assumptions about treatment of substance abuse and review the features of the transtheoretical model of change, which is based on the view that behavior change is a longitudinal process consisting of several stages. In this model, substance abusers must first be persuaded to reduce substance use and then be engaged in treatment before they can be taught the skills necessary to become and remain abstinent. The authors suggest an adaptation of the model that attempts to minimize the impact of the cognitive and motivational deficits associated with schizophrenia. The six-month treatment protocol contains four modules focusing on social skills and problem solving, education about the causes and dangers of substance use, motivational interviewing and goal setting for decreased substance use, and training in behavioral skills for relapse prevention. In the 90-minute, twice weekly sessions, behavioral rehearsal is emphasized, and complex social repertoires, such as refusing substances, are divided into smaller behavioral elements.

Racial and gender differences in expressed emotion and interpersonal control in families of persons with schizophrenia.

Expressed Emotion (EE) has been shown to be predictive of course or severity in many illnesses, but the studies have been largely of white middle-class patients. This study examined gender and racial differences in parental EE level and communication patterns between the parent and patient with schizophrenia, using data from the NIMH Treatment Strategies in Schizophrenia study. Dialogues (n = 140) from 54 patient-parent dyads were coded into the Relational Control Coding System. Resultant data (n = 13,605 sequences) were analyzed with log-linear models. Results show that the relationship between control and EE level was stronger in African American families compared to Caucasians. Gender differences were as expected, with daughters less competitive and more deferential to their parents. Although the total number of high-EE parents with daughters was small, patterns in these families showed parents who responded submissively in contrast to the competitive symmetry in families with male patients.

Substance abuse treatment for people with schizophrenia.

Substance abuse by people with schizophrenia is a serious public health problem that is associated with poor treatment compliance, increased rates of relapse, and disruption of role functioning. There is widespread agreement on the need to integrate psychiatric and substance abuse treatment for this dual disorder, but to date there are no specific treatments with solid empirical support. We first review the primary consequences of substance abuse by people with schizophrenia and then examine what is currently known about their treatment needs. We then describe the special problems faced by this population that interfere with their ability to reduce substance use, with or without treatment. The remainder of the paper focuses on description of a new behavioral treatment we have developed to compensate for the cognitive and motivational deficits that characterize the illness. We describe the development process and present some process data that demonstrate that the intervention is safe and acceptable for people with schizophrenia, and that we are able to train therapists to administer the procedures in a consistent and effective manner. Future studies will examine the effectiveness of the intervention.

Anhedonia, positive and negative affect, and social functioning in schizophrenia.

This study examines the relationship between anhedonia and the trait dimensions of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) in schizophrenia. The relationship between poor social functioning in schizophrenia and these individual differences in affectivity is also examined. Schizophrenia outpatients (n = 37) and normal controls (n = 15) were assessed at a baseline evaluation and again approximately 90 days later. Consistent with the hypothesized decrease in hedonic capacity in schizophrenia, patients reported significantly greater physical and social anhedonia and less PA than controls. However, the schizophrenia group also reported significantly greater NA and social anxiety than did controls. In support of the dispositional view of these individual differences in affectivity, trait measures demonstrated test-retest reliability, and group differences between the schizophrenia group and controls were stable over the 90-day followup period. Within the schizophrenia group, physical and social anhedonia were comparably negatively correlated with trait PA; however, social but not physical anhedonia was significantly positively correlated with NA and social anxiety. Poor social functioning in the schizophrenia group was associated with greater physical and social anhedonia and greater NA and social anxiety. Alternatively, greater trait PA was related to better social functioning. These findings indicate that schizophrenia is characterized by both low PA and elevated NA and that these affective characteristics are a stable feature of the illness. The results also suggest important links between affect and social functioning in schizophrenia.

Relapse and rehospitalization during maintenance treatment of schizophrenia. The effects of dose reduction and family treatment.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have examined dose reduction and family treatment in schizophrenia, but none has examined their interaction. This study assessed the impact of dose reduction of antipsychotic medication and family treatment on relapse and rehospitalization during maintenance treatment. METHODS: Subjects were 313 male and female outpatients at 5 centers with a DSM-III-R diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. In a 3 x 2 design, subjects were randomized to 1 of 3 medication strategies using fluphenazine decanoate under double-blind conditions: continuous moderate dose (standard) (12.5-50 mg every 2 weeks); continuous low dose (2.5-10 mg every 2 weeks); or targeted, early intervention (fluphenazine only when symptomatic). Subjects also were randomized to 1 of 2 family treatment strategies (supportive or applied). Supportive family management involved monthly group meetings. The more intensive applied family management involved monthly group meetings and home visits where communication and problem-solving skills were taught. Patients and families were treated and assessed for 2 years. RESULTS: Both continuous low-dose and targeted treatment increased use of rescue medication and relapse; only targeted treatment increased rehospitalization. This pattern was consistent across both family treatments; there were no differences between family treatments. CONCLUSIONS: These findings reaffirm the value of antipsychotic medication in preventing relapse and rehospitalization. The absence of family treatment differences may be because both conditions engaged families.

Affect recognition in schizophrenia: a synthesis of findings across three studies.

The results of three studies of affect recognition in schizophrenia, all using the same measures (the Face Emotion Identification Test, the Face Emotion Discrimination Test, and the Test of Facial Recognition), are reviewed. The studies differed on two important subject characteristics: patient chronicity and medication status. One study examined chronically ill, unmedicated patients (Kerr and Neale 1993); a second study included chronically ill, medicated patients (Mueser et al. 1996); and a third study examined acutely ill, medicated patients (Bellack, Blanchard and Mueser 1996). Results across the three studies suggest that chronicity of the illness, but not medication status, was related to poor performance on the affect recognition tests. Furthermore, chronically ill patients tended to perform poorly on the control task (the Test of Facial Recognition) as well as the affect perception tasks, suggesting a generalized impairment in facial perception. The implications of the findings for research on social perception are considered, as well as for interventions designed to improve social competence in schizophrenia.

Generalization effects of training on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test for schizophrenia patients.

Several studies have demonstrated that schizophrenia patients can improve their performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test if given appropriate training. However, it is not clear if they are learning a generalizable problem-solving strategy rather than a circumscribed rule. We examined this question by training patients on one of two related problem-solving tests and assessing transfer of training effects across the two instruments; a third group received practice on both tests, but no training. Subjects were 27 schizophrenia patients in the latter stages of an acute hospital admission. While subjects in both training conditions exhibited marked improvement on the trained test, the results failed to reveal any evidence of generalization. Subjects trained on one test performed no better on the other instrument than subjects who received practice only. These results suggest that gains in WCST performance reported in the literature after brief training or instructions may not reflect any meaningful changes in problem solving capacity or in any underlying neurological function. Implications of the findings for rehabilitation programs are discussed, along with limitations of the data and recommendations for future research.

Emotion recognition and social competence in chronic schizophrenia.

This study evaluated (a) whether chronic, medicated schizophrenia patients show deficits in emotion recognition compared to nonpatients, and (b) whether deficits in emotion recognition are related to poorer social competence. Two emotion recognition tests developed by S. L. Kerr and J. M. Neale (1993) and Benton's Test of Facial Recognition (A. Benton, M. VanAllen, K. Hamsher, & H. Levin, 1978) were given to patients with chronic schizophrenia and nonpatient controls. Patients' social skills, social adjustment, and symptomatology were assessed. Like Kerr and Neale's unmedicated patients, these patients performed worse than controls on both emotion recognition tests and the control test. For patients, facial perception was related to the chronicity of illness and social competence. Chronicity of illness may contribute to face perception deficits in schizophrenia, which may affect social competence.

Cue availability and affect perception in schizophrenia.

This study examined affect perception in schizophrenia. Subjects were 35 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, 11 with bipolar disorder, and 19 matched nonpatient controls. All patients were in the latter stages of an acute hospitalization. Measures included a videotaped test of affect perception administered with and without sound, two tests of facial affect perception based on photographs, and two measures of nonaffect perception. The patient groups did not differ from one another on any of the affect perception measures, and few differences occurred between schizophrenia patients and nonpatient controls. Affect perception in schizophrenia patients was not correlated with symptomatology or history of illness, and there were no gender differences. Deficits reported in prior studies may reflect limitations in the assessment methodology commonly employed.