Psychiatric rehabilitation of schizophrenia: Unresolved issues, current trends, and future directions

Psychiatric rehabilitation refers to a treatment philosophy and to a set of assessment and treatment techniques designed to reduce disability and maxi mize environmental adaptation. The field of psychiatric rehabilitation of s chizophrenia is now well developed, and successful interventions exist for teaching many essential community-living skills and for promoting maintenan ce and generalization of these gains. Recent developments include the creat ion of new skills-training interventions and cognitive rehabilitation techn iques and improvements in the delivery of vocational and substance abuse tr eatments. As a field, psychiatric rehabilitation is continuing to develop i n a manner that is responsive to perceived treatment needs, shortcomings of existing interventions, and developments in related fields (e.g., social p sychology, neuroscience of schizophrenia). Some of these developments in th eory and research point to areas of conceptual/theoretical weaknesses in ex isting treatments and assessment measures and suggest directions for furthe r development. This article reviews the current status of a number of areas within the psychiatric rehabilitation of schizophrenia, highlighting futur e needs.