Psychological Therapies for Schizophrenia

Question 1

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Answer 1

• Errors in thinking patterns / faulty internal processing of information leads to dysfunctional behaviour.
• So we try to change the thoughts, which start to change the behaviours.

Question 2

Coping Strategy Enhancement

Answer 2

• Tarrier devised a specific form of CBT for schizophrenia known as coping strategy enhancement which focused on building on schizophrenic’s existing coping strategies.
• Tarrier noted that patients were able to identify triggers for schizophrenic episodes and had devised their own coping strategies.
• Examples of triggers would be things like:
• Certain people
• Being on their own
• Being under stress

Question 3

• Examples of triggers would be things like:

Answer 3

• Certain people
• Being on their own
• Being under stress

Question 4

• There are two types of coping strategies that are developed in the therapy

Answer 4

• Cognitive strategies, such as distraction, concentrate on specific tasks, positive self-talk.
• Behavioural strategies such as relaxation (e.g. breathing exercises), social withdrawal/increasing social contact; loud music to drown out the voices, behavioral experiments.

Question 5

• There are two parts to the therapy:

Answer 5

• Develop a rapport with the patient and identify triggers of psychotic symptoms.
• Target specific symptoms.

Question 6

• Examples of CSE in action:

Answer 6

• Support for the effectiveness of CSE comes from Chadwick (1992) who worked with a schizophrenic who had the delusion that his thinking could influence the future.
• However, he failed to predict what would happen in 50 video clips shown to him which helped provide him with evidence to show that his delusions beliefs were false.

Question 7

CBT Applied to Schizophrenia

Answer 7

• Beck believed that it was less important to get rid of the positive symptoms and more important to train schizophrenics in skills that will get them back into the community. He called this cognitive restructuring.
• For beck, it is better to make the person more functional than to actually deal with the positive symptoms. By making them more functional, you give them a better quality of life, and this diminishes the importance of their hallucinations and delusions.