THE PILOT PROJECT SOTERIA-BERNE FOR THE T REATMENT OF ACUTE SCHIZOPHRENICS .2. RESULTS OF A COMPARATIVE PROSPECTIVE-STUDY OVER 2 YEARS

Following on a previous publication [15], outcomes of 22 acute schizop hrenic indexpatients treated mainly with no- or low-medication strateg ies and with milieu therapeutic, sociotherapeutic and psychotherapeuti c methods in the open therapeutic community ''Soteria Berne'' are comp ared, in a 2-year prospective study, with pairwise matched controls fr om 4 different traditional settings. There were no significant differe nces concerning psychopathology, living situation, worksituation, comb ined evaluation and relapse rate after 2 years. Total dosage of medica tion was less than half, but total costs about 1/3 higher in the index group. Differences of costs were directly related to the inclusion of the - often prolonged - phase of rehabilitation in the in-patient tre atment in ''Soteria'', and disappear when this phase is shifted to oth er settings. These results and additional observations concerning subj ective aspects speak in favour of the creation of other treatment faci lities of the same type.