Discriminating between Cognitive and Supportive Group Therapies for Chronic Mental Illness

This descriptive and comparative study employed a Q-sort process to describe common factors of therapy in two group therapies for inpatients with chronic mental illness. While pharmacological treatments for chronic mental illness are prominent, there is growing evidence that cognitive therapy is also efficacious. Groups examined were part of a larger study comparing the added benefits of cognitive versus supportive group therapy to the treatment milieu. In general, items described the therapist’s attitudes and behaviors, the participants’ attitudes and behaviors, or the group interactions. Results present items that were most and least characteristic of each therapy and items that discriminate between the two modalities. Therapists in both groups demonstrated good therapy skills. However, the cognitive group was described as being more motivated and active than the supportive group, indicating that the groups differed in terms of common as well as specific factors of treatment

Effects of cognitive therapy on social functioning for persons with chronic schizophrenia and other severe psychiatric disorders

Despite optimal neuroleptic medication, many persons with chronic schizophrenia and other severe psychiatric disorders have pronounced social skills deficits which contribute to poor social functioning and high relapse rates. In the last several decades social skills training has become an increasingly important treatment in psychiatric rehabilitation. Research indicates social skills training produces behavior changes but there is mixed evidence concerning generalization. Lack of generalization of social skills has led to an increasing focus on cognitive deficits which may hinder generalization. Efforts to remediate cognitive deficits have been encouraging. It is unclear, however, if remediation of cognitive deficits facilitates improvements in acquisition and generalization of social skills. The present study examined the effects of group cognitive therapy for persons with chronic schizophrenia and other severe psychiatric disorders. Nine subjects, receiving the standard psychiatric rehabilitation program plus group cognitive therapy, and eight subjects, receiving the standard psychiatric rehabilitation program, were compared on measures of symptomology, cognitive functioning, skill training performance and social behavior. Follow-up procedures were conducted five months later. The present study found limited evidence to suggest cognitive therapy was effective in remediating cognitive deficits or in facilitating improvements in the acquisition and/or generalization of social skills. The experimental group did improve significantly in self-neglect compared to the control group and there is some preliminary evidence that persons receiving cognitive therapy have achieved greater stability and a higher level of functioning in the community compared to persons in the control group. Both groups improved significantly in their overall level of symptomology, average rate of rehabilitation progress, and in role plays of interpersonal problem solving situations. Factors which may have contributed to the limited cognitive therapy effects, such as the effectiveness of the standard psychiatric rehabilitation program, the small size and heterogeneity of the groups, the amount of cognitive therapy, group differences resulting from the research design, and the possible inadequacy of the measures, are discussed

Priming by “predictive” context stimuli in visual classification

Subjects participated in visual character- and word-classification-tasks-for-which-spatially contiguous context stimuli were exposed 100 or 1,000 msec prior to target onset. These context stimuli were physically identical to the target on 75% of the trials. Substantial facilitation of RT occurred for “valid” trials at both SOA levels. When the target differed from the context stimuli, evidence for priming the response category, as well as the semantic category of the target (letters vs. digits; metal names vs. furniture names), was obtained at the 100-msec SOA, but these effects were attenuated with the 1,000-msec SOA. With a full second to process a stimulus-predictive cue, subjects appear to develop a stimulus-specific expectation of the target that does-not-involve maintaining the category or response-mapping codes that are active with shorter delays

Discriminating between Cognitive and Supportive Group Therapies for Chronic Mental Illness

This descriptive and comparative study employed a Q-sort process to describe common factors of therapy in two group therapies for inpatients with chronic mental illness. While pharmacological treatments for chronic mental illness are prominent, there is growing evidence that cognitive therapy is also efficacious. Groups examined were part of a larger study comparing the added benefits of cognitive versus supportive group therapy to the treatment milieu. In general, items described the therapist’s attitudes and behaviors, the participants’ attitudes and behaviors, or the group interactions. Results present items that were most and least characteristic of each therapy and items that discriminate between the two modalities. Therapists in both groups demonstrated good therapy skills. However, the cognitive group was described as being more motivated and active than the supportive group, indicating that the groups differed in terms of common as well as specific factors of treatment