ABSTRACT

The aim of this book is to try to challenge some of the assumptions held in psychiatry that may interfere with seeing the bigger picture. One belief currently held not only by the mental health community, but also now embodied in official guidance, is that only one individual psychological therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), is the key to successful outcome and as such should be considered as part of the therapies offered to all patients. This information is now incorporated in both the UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) schizophrenia guidelines and is being considered for the PORT guidelines in the USA. But is this really true? What about other sorts of therapy, particularly one new and innovative therapy for people with schizophrenia, cognitive remediation therapy (CRT)? This chapter will consider what we might expect from the two therapies and argues that even though cognitive remediation is in its infancy it is still likely to offer more advantages than CBT.