Essay On Computer Assisted Cognitive Remediation

According to NAMI (), schizophrenia is a long term mental illness that interferes with a person’s ability to think clearly, make decisions, and relate to others, impairing a person from functioning to their full potential when left untreated. For these persons affected, it is many times difficult to distinguish what is real from what is not. “Unfortunately, no single simple course of treatment exists.” Research has linked schizophrenia to a multitude of possible causes” (NAMI).

Individuals with Schizophrenia typically use medications to treat his or her symptoms. This paper will examine one newspaper article about research conducted by scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health and three peer-reviewed journal articles. This will be done in order to investigate if Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) aids in minimizing symptoms of Schizophrenia more effectively with medication, without medication, and in combination with other therapy styles. These articles propose that CBT should be examined with caution in order to comprehend how it impacts Schizophrenic symptoms. The effectiveness of CBT and reduction of Schizophrenic symptoms could differ in each individual. This is due to numerous factors such as, socioeconomic status, gender, race, environment, family history, and exposure to drugs. It is important to be aware that with every scientific study that is conducted, there may be errors within the study. This may be due to how the data was collected.

There is a considerable amount of different concepts that can be used when thinking about schizophrenia; unfortunately, since it continues to be a misunderstood disorder, there also exist numerous misconceptions about the schizophrenia. The most common misconceptions deal with the treatment options for schizophrenia, the potential recovery rate, and the ability of people who are diagnosed with the disorder or symptoms to live productive and meaningful lives. Though there are no permanent cures to treat the disease, there are certain medications that help manage the symptoms in order to help people lead healthy and satisfied lives. The recovery rate for the disease is also

Despite the advances of antipsychotic medications, schizophrenia is a leading cause of global disability associated with high rates of hospitalizations, depression, and suicide attempts (Statistics Canada, 2015, para. 5). According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (2016), “schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves” (para. 1). Additionally, individuals with schizophrenia may experience varied symptoms including: delusions and hallucinations; movement and thought disorders; flat affect and decreased pleasure; and impaired attention and memory (NIMH, 2016, para. 4, 5, 6). The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of nonpharmacological interventions in the population of adults with schizophrenia. Several modalities of nonpharmacological treatments have been examined for efficacy, however our research focuses specifically on the following categories: (a) psychoeducation and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), (b) physical fitness and yoga programs, (c) combined pharmacological and nonpharmacological therapies, (d) case management and community services, and (e) technology and relational agents.

Level of functioning affects you, for example if you've had the disorder since childhood or adolescence, you are more than highly affected to not achieve expected level of interpersonal, academic or occupational functioning, It must last at least 6 months and must include one month of symptoms. First episode is currently an acute episode if symptoms are for a year. An acute episode is a time period in which the symptoms criteria are fulfilled. Individuals maybe start expressing unusual or odd beliefs. Mood symptoms and full mood episodes are common in schizophrenia. The 5 main symptoms to be diagnosed in this criteria are cognition, depression, and mania symptoms. Currently there are no radiological, laboratory, or psychometric tests for this disorder. It's on the

Studies suggest that computer based cognitive training (CBCT) may be more effective over traditional cognitive training (TCT) in slowing the progression of dementia. CBCT allows for adjustment of difficulty of the task which allows increase as participants improve, therefore enabling constant cognitive challenge (Gaitán et al., 2013).

According to Wilk et al. (2005), cognitive impairment is thought to be a central feature of schizophrenia. It spans across a number of separate cognitive domains, such as attention, working memory, executive functions and verbal fluency (Reichenberg, 2010). This notion is also supported in another study done by Bowie and Harvey (2006), which suggests that as a result of schizophrenia being associated across discrete domains of cognitive impairment, it has led some to gather that it is a disease “with a global profile of neuropsychological impairment”.

Although there is controversy in regards to which type of treatment is most successful in regards to initial episodes of schizophrenia disorder, there are also studies looking into whether or not there are issues associated with receiving no treatment at all. Ho et al. (2003) created a study to determine the effect of a first episode of schizophrenia remaining undetected and untreated for more than one year. It was hypothesized by Ho et al. (2003) that if psychosis has toxicity to the human body, psychosis could have detrimental effects on cognitive functioning and the structure of the brain if left untreated. This study included 156 subjects, all who had not had more than three months of previous antipsychotic treatment and all of which were in the midst of their first episode of schizophrenia. The mean amount of time in which the participants went untreated for psychotic symptoms at the beginning of the experiment was 74.3 weeks. Ho et al. (2003) stated that participants were put through a battery of thirty six cognitive tests in which their scores were scored against other standardized scores. The participants were divided into two groups around the median amount of time in which they were untreated since the onset of their symptoms, which was thirteen weeks (Ho et al., 2003). Neurocognitive tests included tests of verbal, memory and motor skills. Ho et al. (2003) stated that in comparison to each other, the two groups did not differ in any of the cognitive categories

Each of the components and processes have been tested in multiple studies. One study, A Brief Cognitive-Behavioral Social Skills Training for Stabilized Outpatients With Schizophrenia: A Preliminary Study, discusses these in detail. In conclusion, the study presents the effectiveness and outcomes of the treatment. The authors came to many conclusions in a variety of areas, including performance, recognition of faces, quality of life, interpersonal communication, social skills and negative symptoms. Results, at the post-treatment, identified improvements in a majority of these areas. In addition to this, according to Rus-Calafell et al. (2013), “Informants reported an increase in social implication and interpersonal communication of those patients who participated in the SST group at post-treatment.” In other words, family members and friends of patients that participated in the social skills training reported that they noticed an improvement of social skills within that patient; most, if not

Nordentoft et al. (2013) gathered 547 individuals ranging from 18 to 45 years old and were selected via a central-randomized trial, which basically involves randomly selecting individuals that will be placed in either a control group or experimental group. Criterion for diagnosis consisted of individuals “within the schizophrenic spectrum” (Nordentoft et al., 2013, p. 2), who did not take antipsychotic medication for as long as 12 weeks. Assessment of treatment involved recurring interviews at 1, 2, and 5 years. Interview test batteries that were used were the Schedule for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry, Scales for Assessment of Positive (and Negative) Symptoms, Global Assessment of Functioning, the Social Network Schedule, plus the Interview for Retrospective Assessment of Onset of Schizophrenia, Social Behavior Assessment Schedule, and Client Satisfaction Questionnaire

Approximately 22% of the American population suffers from some kind of mental disorder at any given time. (Passer and Smith, 2004) Schizophrenia is one of the most serious of these mental disorders, and there are many different kinds of treatment. While all mental disorders offer diagnosis and treatment challenges, few are more challenging than schizophrenia. It is both bizarre and puzzling, and has been described as “one of the most challenging disorders to treat effectively.” (Passer and Smith, 2004, 534)

There are perhaps two main prongs to the development of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy as an intervention for schizophrenia, the first being based upon the sizable research that centre on family interventions, which have been successful in reducing patient relapse in schizophrenic families (Pilling et al., 2002). Family interventions are important to consider as they became established treatments during a phase where drug treatments were the main focus of attention in this field and so opened the area of non biological treatment for schizophrenia. And as I will touch upon later drug therapies are frequently used to reduce psychotic symptoms and relapse but these treatments rarely provide the

Before the 1990’s, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was a major form of psychotherapy for anxiety and depression. During the 1990’s, it was introduced as a new form of psychotherapy to tackle medication-resistant symptoms of schizophrenia (Kukla, Davis, & Lyasker, 2014). In this psychotherapy approach, therapists work with patients to identify maladaptive beliefs and behavior, change these maladaptive beliefs and behavior, and then develop coping skills to help the patient learn how to manage remaining symptoms (Kukla et al.,

These psychotherapy treatment for schizophrenia are basic therapy along with antipsychotic medication taken on a daily basis. The ABC model helps create a way to organize confusing thoughts and experiences. The positive correlation with CBT and REBT is to help redirect the thoughts, feelings and actions. Studies from Hogarty (2004) show CET teaches skills for social functioning, learn how to recognize triggers, and improve their attention, memory, and organize their thoughts. The goal of therapy is to help individuals with schizophrenia to learn coping skill to overcome everyday challenges of living with the disorder, so that they can achieve goals and function in society. According to Turkington and McKenna (2003) they used CBT effectively in terms of insight improvement and reduction in overall symptoms and depression. Cognitive–behavioral therapy would appear to be very acceptable to patients, with an average rate of dropout across studies of 12–15%. The therapy would also appear to be safe, with no evidence of increasing suicidal ideation, agitation or violence in any study to date (Turkington & McKenna 2003 pg. 16). According to Chien, Leung, Yeung, & Wong, (2013) during the last three decades, clinical research has increasingly indicated that community-based psychosocial interventions can improve the longer-term outcomes of patients with

Schizophrenia is a universal mental illness which is both complex and devastating. Schizophrenia generally begins in the early stages of life and may lead to lifelong disabilities (Moritz, 2010). The context of this paper shall include an introduction on schizophrenia as well as the reasoning this discipline was chosen. It will include a critiqued research study that will explain how the research was presented. The primary focus on the research study will be a literature review, the methods used, the results found, and a presented discussion.