The National Danish Schizophrenia Project

University of Copenhagen

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Schizophrenia

Treatments: Behavioral: Psychosocial treatment/Psychodynamic treatment

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00221585

5490-184

Details and patient eligibility

About

A prospective, longitudinal, multi-centre investigation (16 centres), including 562 patients, consecutively referred during two years, with a first-episode psychosis of ICD-10, F-2 type. Patients were treated with: 1) 'Supportive psychodynamic psychotherapy as a supplement to treatment as usual', 2) an 'Integrated, assertive, psychosocial and educational treatment programme', and 3) 'Treatment as usual'.

Full description

The study is a prospective, comparative, longitudinal study with an intervention period of a minimum of two years and a registration of data at baseline and 1, 2 and 5 years after inclusion. Three sub-cohorts with different treatment modalities were designed:

Treatment1: 119 patients were, in addition to TaU, offered SPP, i.e. a scheduled manualised supportive individual psychotherapy (1 session of 45 min. per week, for a period of 1-3 years) and/or group psychotherapy (1 session of 60 min. per week for a period of 1-3 years). Anti-psychotic medication was given in doses based on individual needs; Treatment 2: 139 patients were offered IT, i.e. a scheduled, two-year long programme consisting of assertive community treatment, psycho-educational multi-family treatment (a.m. McFarlane, consisting of 4-6 families including the patients, meeting 1½ hour every second week for 1½ year), social skills training (concerning medication, self-management, coping with symptoms, conversational skills, problem and conflict solving skills), and antipsychotic medication (low dose strategy). This project, OPUS, has been described in detail elsewhere

Sex: All

Ages: 16 to 35 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

consecutively referred patients, age 16-35 years, who suffered from a first-episode psychosis of the schizophrenic spectrum disorder (ICD-10, DF 20-29).

Exclusion criteria

• patients suffering from mental retardation or other organic brain damage, and patients who were not proficient enough in Danish due to their foreign origins.