Ninety subjects with severe and disabling psychiatric conditions, predominantly schizophrenia, participated in a controlled-outcome trial of the cognitive component of Integrated Psychological Therapy (IPT), a group-therapy modality intended to reestablish basic neurocognitive functions. The cognitive therapy was delivered to subjects in the experimental condition during intensive 6-month treatment periods. Control subjects received supportive group therapy. Before, during, and after the intensive treatment period, all subjects received an enriched regimen of comprehensive psychiatric rehabilitation, including social and living skills training, optimal pharmacotherapy, occupational therapy, and milieu-based behavioral treatment. IPT subjects showed incrementally greater gains compared with controls on the primary outcome measure, the Assessment of Interpersonal Problem-Solving Skills, suggesting that procedures that target cognitive impairments of schizophrenia spectrum disorders can enhance patients' response to standard psychiatric rehabilitation, at least in the short term, in the domain of social competence. There was equivocal evidence for greater improvement in the experimental condition on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale disorganization factor and strong evidence for greater improvement on a laboratory measure of attentional processing. There was significant improvement in both conditions on measures of attention, memory, and executive functioning, providing support for the hypothesis that therapeutic procedures that target impaired cognition enhance response to conventional psychiatric rehabilitation modalities over a 6-month timeframe.
A three‐factor model is proposed for clinical assessment of cognitive and neuropsychological impairments in schizophrenia. The first factor is stable, pervasive and vulnerability‐linked. The second and third include executive, memory and conceptual abilities and are episode‐linked. The third factor may be amenable to psychosocial treatment.
This descriptive and comparative study employed a Q-sort process to describe common factors of therapy in two group therapies for inpatients with chronic mental illness. While pharmacological treatments for chronic mental illness are prominent, there is growing evidence that cognitive therapy is also efficacious. Groups examined were part of a larger study comparing the added benefits of cognitive versus supportive group therapy to the treatment milieu. In general, items described the therapist's attitudes and behaviors, the participants' attitudes and behaviors, or the group interactions. Results present items that were most and least characteristic of each therapy and items that discriminate between the two modalities. Therapists in both groups demonstrated good therapy skills. However, the cognitive group was described as being more motivated and active than the supportive group, indicating that the groups differed in terms of common as well as specific factors of treatment.
This article reviews three studies investigating the relationship between information processing and social functioning in schizophrenia. The most consistent finding is the association between vigilance performance on a hybrid continuous performance/span of apprehension task and various indices of social functioning (e.g., ward behavior). However, the nature of the information processing-social functioning relationships is mutable and appears dependent on a number of factors (e.g., cross-sectional versus longitudinal designs). This article concludes with a discussion of treatment implications and future research directions.
A critical component of inpatient treatment for persons with severe psychiatric disorders is an evaluation of their social impairments. Most existing methods for such evaluations involve staff input and can be both time-consuming and expensive. This paper reports on the use of peer ratings as a method for assessing sociability, an aspect of social functioning in this clinical population.Thirty-two inpatients with severe psychiatric disorders who had spent an average of 18 months on an inpatient unit in a state facility rated the popularity of their inpatient peers by completing a 7-point scale measuring how much they enjoyed visiting with each patient. The reliability of peer ratings and their association with staff ratings of patients' behavior on the unit were assessed.The peer ratings had excellent test-retest reliability and were highly associated with staff members' independent evaluations of patients' behavior. Peer ratings appear to have promise as a measure of social functioning among inpatients with severe psychiatric disorders.
Abstract Impairments in cognitive functioning, which obstruct psychiatric rehabilitation, are resistant to drugs and conventional psychosocial treatment but can be reduced by specialized training techniques.
