Psychological Treatments For Schizophrenia Essay

Clinicians monitored both groups using standardized checklists that rate symptom severity and quality of life, like whether a person is working, and how well he or she is getting along with family members.The group that started on the combined treatment scored, on average, more poorly on both measures at the beginning of the trial.The team recruited 404 people with first-episode psychosis, mostly diagnosed in their late teens or 20s.

Clinicians monitored both groups using standardized checklists that rate symptom severity and quality of life, like whether a person is working, and how well he or she is getting along with family members.The group that started on the combined treatment scored, on average, more poorly on both measures at the beginning of the trial.The team recruited 404 people with first-episode psychosis, mostly diagnosed in their late teens or 20s.

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The drugs used to treat schizophrenia, called antipsychotics, work extremely well for some people, eliminating psychosis with few side effects; but most who take them find that their bad effects, whether weight gain, extreme drowsiness, or emotional numbing, are hard to live with.

Nearly three quarters of people prescribed medications for the disorder stop taking them within a year and a half, studies find.“As for medications, I have had every side effect out there, from chills and shakes to lockjaw and lactation,” said Maggie, 20, who asked that her last name be omitted.

In 2014, Congress awarded $25 million in block grants to the states to be set aside for early-intervention mental health programs.

So far, 32 states have begun using those grants to fund combined-treatment services, Dr. Experts said the findings could help set a new standard of care in an area of medicine that many consider woefully inadequate: the management of so-called first episode psychosis, that first break with reality in which patients (usually people in their late teens or early 20s) become afraid and deeply suspicious.

Heinssen is director of services and intervention research.

It is the National Institute of Mental Health, not the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid. 20 about a study of the treatment of first-episode schizophrenia, using information from a patient advocacy organization, referred incorrectly to the experience of one woman who had been treated for the disorder.Its findings have already trickled out to government agencies: On Friday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published in its influential guidelines a strong endorsement of the combined-therapy approach.Mental health reform bills now being circulated in Congress “mention the study by name,” said Dr. Heinssen, the director of services and intervention research at the National Institute of Mental Health, who oversaw the research.The findings, from by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States, concluded that schizophrenia patients who received a program intended to keep dosages of antipsychotic medication as low as possible and emphasize one-on-one talk therapy and family support made greater strides in recovery over the first two years of treatment than patients who got the usual drug-focused care.The report, to be published on Tuesday in The American Journal of Psychiatry and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, comes as Congress debates mental health reform and as interest in the effectiveness of treatments grows amid a debate over the possible role of mental illness in mass shootings.More than two million people in the United States have a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and the treatment for most of them mainly involves strong doses of antipsychotic drugs that blunt hallucinations and delusions but can come with unbearable side effects, like severe weight gain or debilitating tremors.Now, results of a landmark government-funded study call that approach into question.The sooner people started the combined treatment after that first episode, the better they did, the study found.The average time between the first episode and receiving medical care — for those who do get it — is currently about a year and half.First, help with work or school such as assistance in deciding which classes or opportunities are most appropriate, given a person’s symptoms.Second, education for family members to increase their understanding of the disorder.