COGNITIVE THERAPY AND RECOVERY FROM ACUTE-PSYCHOSIS - A CONTROLLED TRIAL .2. IMPACT ON RECOVERY-TIME

Background. A trial of CT in acute psychosis conducted by the authors has shown a significant impact on the rate and degree of recovery of p ositive symptoms, the focus of the intervention. This paper seeks to d etermine whether these effects generalise to other features of acute p sychosis including dysphoria, insight and 'low level' psychotic thinki ng which were not directly targeted. Method. Measures of dysphoria, in sight and psychotic thinking were taken over a six-month period follow ing presentation for acute psychosis. Using survival analysis, time to recovery from psychosis using three definitions of increasing stringe ncy was compared between the CT and control group. Results. CT was ass ociated with a 25-50% reduction in recovery time depending on the defi nition used. Conclusion. The impact of the CT intervention extended be yond positive symptoms to include insight, dysphoria and 'low level' p sychotic thinking. Nevertheless this kind of 'clinical' recovery requi red a median of 20 weeks to complete. Implications for clinical models of acute care are discussed.