WillySenior Contributor
CBTp for schizophrenia and looking for CBTp therapist
I am looking for a competent practitioner of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis (CBTp).
CBTp is not new. I understand that it has been around for about 30 years. Despite a lot of very positive reports as well as gaining official government approval for treatment of schizophrenia in countries like the US, UK and Australia it remains controversial and appears to have been effectively sidelined.
I have spent quite a bit of time going through a lot of research information. This stuff is not particularly easy reading but there appear to be three groups of academics interested in CBTp.
First there are those who are strongly in favour of it. They claim it has produced some wonderful results and advocate for its increased use.
Then there are those who are strongly opposed to it. They claim that it has no value whatsoever and strongly discourage its use.
A third group aren’t sure and seem to spend their time debating the various problems of different research reporting methods.
The argument for and against CBTp seems to revolve around the main stream medical/pharmacological model of treatment and whether or not a psychological intervention like CBTp is a better or viable alternative for treating schizophrenia compared to anti-psychotic medication.
It is perhaps not surprising that those opposed to CBTp want to evaluate it using similar criteria to those used for evaluating pharmaceutical solutions. They often dismiss other criteria for evaluating CBTp as irrelevant.
In my experience anti-psychotic drugs do a pretty good job of stopping hallucinations and preventing or at least minimising psychotic episodes. The problem is that they also often do a pretty good job at minimising quality of life, sometimes to near intolerable levels not to mention an average reduction in life expectancy of around 15 years. My understanding of CBTp is that it is more concerned about quality of life than symptoms which it is claimed often diminish and sometimes even disappear completely when underling issues are dealt with or resolved.
We are told that schizophrenia affects about 1 person out of every 100 in Australia. Schizophrenia is therefore not a disease - it is a phenomena! If a psychological intervention like CBTp can help even a small percentage of this vast number of people surely it should be encouraged and supported.
In my view, blanking out 1 in 100 lives with often unwanted and unwelcome chemical interventions borders on criminal negligence, particularly when pressure, threats and sometimes force is used to make people comply.
I was involuntarily hospitalised and diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 24 years old and subjected, without consent to intensive drug therapy. The overall experience has had a very significant and negative life long impact on me. I am just about to turn 71.
I used to have quite a few friends who suffered from schizophrenia. Sadly only one of them is still alive today. The others, “stabilised on medication”, lived a drug induced shadow existence and died prematurely from the side effects of the potent chemicals that they were coerced into taking.
As part of my investigations I found a You Tube video lecture given to student CBTp practitioners by Laura Tully, the director of clinical training at the UC Davis early psychosis program in the USA. The lecture made a lot of sense and was easy to understand. Here is the link in case anyone is interested.
UPDATE 19Feb 2022 - The original video no longer appears to be available. Here is another short YouTube video that I found that explains CBT-p in simple terms.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychosis
I want to give CBTp a try to see if it will help with some of the problems I experience from periodic hallucinations and psychotic episodes. I live in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Reasonable access is obviously an issue. If anyone knows of or about a CBTp practitioner and can point me in their direction it would be very much appreciated.
