Psychotherapeutically oriented treatment of schizophrenia: results of 5-year-follow-up.

The authors have developed a psychotherapeutic approach to schizophrenia within the community psychiatric health care system. The orientation is psychodynamic but global in the meaning that the therapeutic plans are made on the basis of case-specific need of the patients and of their families and include both individual psychotherapy, family therapy and therapeutic communities. The material is composed of 100 successive patients of the schizophrenia group aged 16 - 44 years and for the first time admitted for treatment into the different units of the Turku Mental Health District in 1976 - 77. A multiprofessional staff was acting as therapists, supported by a continuous and intensive on-the-job -training and supervision. The results preliminary reported in this paper are based on a follow-up study 5 years after admission to treatment. 56 patients could be included in the psychotherapy group given at least some mode of psychotherapy in an adequate amount. The background variables of patients selected for various modes of therapy as well as the prognostic results are studied with the aid of logistic regression analyses. The findings indicate that the development of a global psychotherapeutic orientation is possible in the field of community psychiatry and yields results that demonstrate its meaningfulness. The implementation of psychotherapy had clearly positive explanatory connections with a favourable prognosis, and although these connections were not equally strong as the connections of some central clinical and psychosocial variables, they were obvious and manifold.