Abstract
Comprehensive social cognition training programs have been effective to improve social cognition in people with chronic schizophrenia, although there is insufficient quality evidence for recent-onset psychosis. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) in a sample of recent-onset schizophrenia outpatients. Sixteen participants who had their first psychotic episode for less than 2 years were randomly allocated to the SCIT group during 20 weeks (weekly sessions) or to a psychoeducation group and completed baseline and post-training assessment for cognitive biases, social cognition, clinical symptoms and functioning. Permutation-based analysis revealed improvements in overall functioning (P = 0.036) and blame score (P = 0.070) in the SCIT group compared to the psychoeducation intervention, with large effect sizes (d = 1.438 and d = 1.204, respectively). There were also large effect sizes for hostility, emotion recognition, social perception, positive and total symptoms (d = 0.833-1.158). These results suggest that SCIT may be an effective tool to improve attributional biases and functional outcomes in recent-onset schizophrenia outpatients. Future controlled trials with larger sample size and follow-up assessments should be developed to further understand effective intervention outcomes for this population.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 206-212 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Early Intervention in Psychiatry |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 2021 |
Keywords
- early intervention
- recent-onset
- rehabilitation
- schizophrenia
- social cognition
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Psychiatry and Mental health
- Biological Psychiatry
- Phychiatric Mental Health