Community management of schizophrenia

A behavioral family therapy approach, which sought to reduce the impact of environmental stressors in schizophrenia, was compared with individual supportive therapy in a controlled study. 36 schizophrenic patients were randomly assigned to the 2 treatment conditions after they were stabilized on neuroleptic drugs. At the end of 1 yr, significantly fewer family-treated Ss had suffered a major clinical exacerbation or had been hospitalized. Blind ratings of florid schizophrenic psychopathology supported this clinically observed superiority of the family-based approach.