Integrating psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy for schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia can no longer be viewed as a chronic, inexorably deteriorating disorder with little chance for rehabilitation or recovery. Felicitous outcomes, however, are achieved only if treatment and rehabilitative services are continuously provided to individuals and their families. Clinicians can no longer be content to rely solely on a biomedical model of treatment that reduces the disorder to the biological correlates of psychotic symptoms. Instead, a biopsychosocial perspective, which emphasizes the interaction of the brain, behavior, and the environment, serves as the foundation for the integration of psychopharmacology and psychotherapy. This integration has arisen specifically to develop, evaluate, and disseminate those techniques that improve the social functioning of people with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Employing the biopsychosocial approach to comprehensive care—including training in social and independent living skills, family psychoeducation, self-management of medication and symptoms—can amplify the impact of medication in fostering better outcomes and higher levels of personal functioning. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.