13.2.16

(2027 Exams) Evaluation of Psychological Therapies

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Advantages of Psychological Therapies

Even though psychological treatments can't cure schizophrenia, they have been successful in making schizophrenia more manageable and improving quality of life for patients.

Pros of cognitive behavioural therapy

Pros of cognitive behavioural therapy

  • CBT helps by allowing patients to make sense of and, in some cases, challenge some of their symptoms.
Pros of family therapy

Pros of family therapy

  • Family therapy helps by reducing the stress of living with schizophrenia in the family, for both the patient and other family members.

Disadvantages of Psychological Therapies

Evidence supporting the effectiveness of psychological treatment for schizophrenia is modest at best. Schizophrenia remains one of the hardest mental health conditions to treat.

Weakness - lack of cure

Weakness - lack of cure

  • The failure of psychological treatments to actually cure schizophrenia is a major weakness.
Ethical concerns with CBT

Ethical concerns with CBT

  • There are ethical issues related to psychological treatments for schizophrenia (even though there's an absence of side-effects or medical risk associated with drug treatments.)
  • CBT might raise ethical concerns because it can be seen to be interfering with a person’s freedom of thought. If a patient is encouraged to challenge their paranoia of a controlling government, this might lead to change in their entire political outlook.
Quality of the evidence

Quality of the evidence

  • The quality and effectiveness of psychological treatments has been challenged.
  • Studies often lack control groups and participants are rarely randomly allocated to conditions.
  • These methodologically weak studies tend to be more optimistic in their results and conclusions than studies employing tighter controls.
Lack of availability - art therapy

Lack of availability - art therapy

  • There is some concern that therapies that might help some patients aren’t widely available.
  • For example, The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends art therapy, provided by a qualified art therapist with experience of working with schizophrenia sufferers, is made more widely available.
Jump to other topics
1

Social Influence

2

Memory

3

Attachment

4

(2026 Exams) Psychopathology

5

(2027 Exams) Clinical Psychology & Mental Health

6

Approaches in Psychology

7

Biopsychology

8

Research Methods

8.1

Research Methods

8.2

Scientific Processes

8.3

Data Handling & Analysis

8.4

Inferential Testing

9

Issues & Debates in Psychology (A2 only)

10

Option 1: Relationships (A2 only)

10.1

Relationships: Sexual Relationships (A2 only)

10.2

Relationships: Romantic Relationships (A2 only)

10.3

(2026 Exams) Relationships: Virtual (A2 only)

10.4

(2027 Exams) Relationships: Online (A2 only)

11

Option 1: Gender (A2 only)

12

Option 1: Cognition & Development (A2 only)

13

Option 2: Schizophrenia (A2 only)

14

Option 2: Eating Behaviour (A2 only)

15

Option 2: Stress (A2 only)

16

Option 3: Aggression (A2 only)

17

Option 3: Forensic Psychology (A2 only)

18

Option 3: Addiction (A2 only)

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