A landmark, government funded study finds that schizophrenic patients who received a combination of drugs, talk therapy and family support made greater strides in the first 2 years of treatment than patients who just received drug therapy.

Featured on the front page of yesterday’s NY Times, the report made clear that  family involvement and “talk therapy” are vital in the treatment of schizophrenia, and this combined approach provided more symptom relief to patients (and thus families) and capacity for higher functioning at the end of 2 years.  The study will be published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, and the article can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/health/talk-therapy-found-to-ease-schizophrenia.html?_r=0

At CCAF we are well aware of the importance of family inclusion and family psychoeducation around certain illness, particularly those that strike in early adulthood.  We collaborate with Dr. Claudia Baldassano and her team of psychiatry residents to facilitate multifamily Bipolar Psychoeducation groups.  We have developed a series of 4 – 90 minute family group sessions during which:

• information about the illness is presented, and families invited to ask questions,
• families tell their story about how the diagnosis was made,   
• families discuss the process of coming to terms with the illness,
• we discuss how to handle relapse and emergencies, and
• anything else the family wants to talk about.

The Center for Couples and Adult Families is fortunate to be situated within the Department of Psychiatry here at Penn.  We look forward to further collaboration to develop similar groups for families of schizophrenic patients.