ABSTRACT
The rapidity with which CBT has become an established therapy for schizophrenia is remarkable. Some 15 years ago CBT was widely regarded as quite inappropriate for this, the severest mental illness, and was nowhere available as far as we know. Then a few pioneering research groups, mainly in the UK and Australia, re-ignited the very early work that Beck (1952) and others had done in the 1950s but that had remained dormant for decades. Some exciting and unexpected results came from this work. For example, Chadwick and Lowe (1990) surprised many with their finding, using multiple baseline singlecase methodology, that it was possible to engage people with psychosis in a collaborative fashion and to explore systematically the logical and empirical bases for their delusions. This process of ‘collaborative empiricism’ was found to weaken strongly held delusional beliefs. The rest, as they say, is history. This and parallel work inspired clinical researchers to develop and implement CBT protocols for various aspects of psychosis, and this has led in turn to a proliferation of randomised controlled trials and an assured place for CBT in the therapeutic armamentarium (Pilling et al., 2002; Tarrier and Wykes, 2004).
