Psychosocial Interventions in Persons with Schizophrenia

Abstract

Background: Schizophrenia is a severe and chronic illness that is often one of the most difficult to manage, which has health and economic consequences for patients, families, and communities. Psychosocial interventions aim to change psychological, social, physiological, and functional outcomes by utilizing psychological or behavioural actions. Objective: To study the psychosocial needs and outcomes of persons with schizophrenia. Materials & Methods: Psychosocial intervention was offered to patients with schizophrenia to see the outcomes of the intervention. The research design of the study was a prospective intervention study in which intervention was given to patients at the Out-Patient Department (OPD) of the Department of Psychiatry, Government Medical College & Hospital, Chandigarh. 15 persons with schizophrenia (F20.0-20.9) as per the ICD-10 were included in the study consecutively. The intervention was done in 8 sessions around 1 hour in each session on a weekly basis for 2 months. Results: There were certain areas of unmet needs found in every patient. All the areas of impairment in socio-occupational functioning have a statistically significant difference in the pre-and post-intervention and patients' adherence to the medication improved. All patients GAF scores recorded a significant difference at the 0.001 level. The QOL score was also reported higher in post-intervention. The intervention patients showed high satisfaction with the services since the scores were obtained on each of the six domains of PAT-SAT. Conclusion: It demonstrated the feasibility of psychosocial intervention in an OPD setting in a tertiary care centre. It also confirmed the various outcomes along with pharmacological intervention.  

Keywords: Schizophrenia, Psychosocial, Psychosocial Interventions