Treating Psychotic Symptoms of Young Individuals Presenting a First Episode of Schizophrenia: Comparison of Two State-of-the-Art Interventions

To verify the efficacy of a group cognitive-behavioral therapy approach to lessening psychotic symptoms of individuals with a first episode of psychosis, and to compare its effects to a known skills training approach and a control group. Our primary hypotheses were that CBT would do better than the control group at all points in time, and better than the skills training approach, though only at follow-ups

The study's protocol has the following objectives: to verify the efficacy of a group CBT approach; to compare the effects of CBT to those of the symptom management module and to a control group on psychotic symptoms and subjective experiences (e.g., depression, anxiety, self-esteem, social support, insight, and coping); and to assess what the effects are related to, via measuring client variables, therapist variables, and intervention variables that might explain the results. This study follows a randomized controlled trial design where participants are randomly assigned to one of the three groups at each recruiting wave. Both treatment modalities hold the same number of group meetings as well as similar formats, lengths of treatment and operational structures, each operationalized in detailed manuals. Interviewers are blind to group allocation. Symptoms, both psychotic and otherwise, depression, self-esteem, social adaptation, anxiety, insight, social support, and coping are all measured before the beginning of treatment, three months follow-up, nine-months follow-up, and 15-months follow-up