ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by evaluating the application and content of the most common modes of psychotherapy included in the need-adapted treatment of schizophrenic psychoses, based on personal experiences gained while working in public health care in the Turku Clinic and as a private psychiatrist. Personal nurses play a crucial role in helping the patient in a psychotherapeutic community. Openness, unprejudiced elimination of unnecessary and detrimental hierarchies, and an effort to integrate the therapeutic activities are among the goals of psychotherapeutic communities treating psychotic patients. Psychodynamic family therapies usually require a relatively long time, preferably 2-4 years, in order to be successful. Psychodynamic family therapy was subsequently overshadowed by the use of the systemic-strategic approach. The most critical aspect of long-term psychosis therapies is often the ability of the therapist to handle and control his/her countertransference. In the need-adapted treatment model, drug treatment is considered to be an auxiliary method, used to support the psychotherapeutically oriented treatment.
