What is the current treatment for schizophrenia?

Multi-element team based training is the model for schizophrenia treatment. Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, director, New York State Psychiatric Institute explains how this works.

Transcript

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These things may entail cognitive remediation, may entail some type of supportive psychotherapy,

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may entail called supported employment or supported education. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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The model for treatment is what's called multi-element team-based treatment, meaning that you use specific pharmacologic and psychosocial

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treatments to address the various needs of a person that has schizophrenia. You can think of it as disease management.

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It's not enough just to give somebody a medication, which suppresses their psychotic symptoms and stabilizes them.

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You also need to help them to regain their footing in their life, to resume college,

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to re-enter the social scene, to recover

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their cognitive faculties which may have been injured in the psychotic episode that heralded

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the onset of their illness. And these things may entail cognitive remediation,

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may entail some type of supportive psychotherapy. Oftentimes the onset of the illness occurs when people are in college because that's

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the age and the period. It's also a stressful transitional time. Somebody gets sick freshman/sophomore.

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They're out of school for a period of time on medical leave. They're treated. They get better. They want to get back to school. They can't just rush back to school.

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It's like if you break a leg and you your leg recovers, you just don't start skiing again or playing tennis again.

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You need to ease back into it. So to facilitate that, there are things called supported education, supported employment that are

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desirable and very effective. Now, these are all evidences-based treatments. These are not things that we think, oh, it's a good idea to do.

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These are things that have been developed, tested, shown to be effective, and are part of what would be

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considered state-of-the-art treatment. But state-of-the-art treatment, unfortunately, is not standard of care.

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Why? Because we don't provide these treatments everywhere. And we don't reimburse them, so they're not widely available.