Need-Adapted Treatment of Schizophrenia: Family Interventions

Abstract

Need-adapted treatment of schizophrenia is an integrative treatment model developed in the Turku Schizophrenia Project. It is based on the interactional viewpoint and understanding on the interactional level. Experience of family and network therapy has shown that immediate interactions-oriented intervention is an essential starting-point for the treatment. It creates the possibility for the treatment as a whole to become a therapeutic process. For clinical purposes, it has seemed logical to divide the patients into three groups; the methods and focus of the family-oriented work differ somewhat between the groups. The main separator between these is the level of social functioning before the psychosis.