A Randomized Study on the Efficacy of the Social Cognition Training Program-Brief Version in a Sample of Patients With Schizophrenia

Abstract

Objective: In recent years, various interventions have been developed to train social cognition in schizophrenia, which have been shown to be effective in improving emotional processing, theory of mind and social perception, as well as community functioning. One of these interventions is the Social Cognition Training Program (SCTP), a program consisting of 24 sessions. For the present study we developed a brief version of 12 sessions with the aim to improve its applicability. To evaluate the effectiveness of this version, a randomized controlled trial was conducted comparing the SCTP to a neurocognitive training. Method: The trial was conducted with a sample of 299 patients with schizophrenia, with assessments conducted at baseline, posttreatment, and 6- and 12-month follow up. The assessment protocol included tests of emotion recognition, theory of mind, attributional style, symptomatology, community functioning, and neurocognitive functioning. Results: The results obtained showed that the patients of the experimental group improved in the recognition of the emotions of sadness, anger, and fear, and in the first- and second-order theory of mind. However, no significant improvement was observed in the measures of community functioning. Improvements in first- and second-order theory of mind but not emotion recognition persisted at follow ups. Conclusions and Implications for Practice: Results obtained showed that deficits in social cognition can be ameliorated, although it could be necessary to have booster sessions to maintain the benefits of the training and to complement the SCPT with another type of interventions aimed specifically at transferring the benefits of social cognition training to "real" life.