Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder that can affect all aspects of a patient’s life and lead to suicide (APA, 2013). Because of this, psychiatrists often prescribe antipsychotic medications to treat symptoms (Chien, Mui, Gray, & Cheung, 2016). However, many patients do not adhere to the prescribed treatment, resulting in a multitude of problems including recurrence of symptoms and hospitalization (MacEwan et al., 2016). Adherence therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which patients discuss their feelings about their mental illness, treatment, and life (Chein et al, 2016). Adherence therapy is an effective addition to the medical treatment of schizophrenia because it results in improved outcomes for patients.
Schizophrenia is characterized by two or more of the following symptoms over course of a six-month period (APA, …show more content…
Half of the patients received adherence therapy once a week for eight weeks and these patients showed a 22% decline in positive symptoms at the end of this time period (Anderson et al., 2010). Additionally, when asked about their experiences, 83% of those in the adherence therapy group indicated that they had learned how to better manage their mental health (Anderson et al., 2010). However, one weakness of the study was that the researchers were only able to include 26 patients in the study, due to lack of interest of many potential participants and their inability to provide informed consent (Anderson et al., 2010). It was also determined that the participants in the sample initially had a high baseline adherence, compared to the average rates of adherence for schizophrenic patients (Anderson et al., 2010). This indicates a potential source of error as these positive results may have differed with schizophrenics with low baseline
Schizophrenia is characterized by two or more of the following symptoms over course of a six-month period (APA, …show more content…
Half of the patients received adherence therapy once a week for eight weeks and these patients showed a 22% decline in positive symptoms at the end of this time period (Anderson et al., 2010). Additionally, when asked about their experiences, 83% of those in the adherence therapy group indicated that they had learned how to better manage their mental health (Anderson et al., 2010). However, one weakness of the study was that the researchers were only able to include 26 patients in the study, due to lack of interest of many potential participants and their inability to provide informed consent (Anderson et al., 2010). It was also determined that the participants in the sample initially had a high baseline adherence, compared to the average rates of adherence for schizophrenic patients (Anderson et al., 2010). This indicates a potential source of error as these positive results may have differed with schizophrenics with low baseline