Efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy on the positive symptoms of schizophrenia

This review was produced with the explicit purpose of examining the most recent evidence found from contemporary research on the efficacy of CBT on the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. The research of the last five years includes new and novel forms of CBT and thus reviews including these types of psychosocial intervention are needed. Reviews like this one can be used to form guidelines and improve the evidence base of the treatment of patients with schizophrenia.

This review and the overall corpus of studies regarding the topic provide a conclusion of CBT being an effective form of adjunctive treatment with medication to lower positive symptoms in the patients undergoing this therapy. The effect sizes in this review are moderate, but the diversity of the forms of CBT analyzed provide an ensuring view of CBT as a highly flexible form of intervention to be used on a variety of patients and groups with positive effects. This study also addresses cognitive functionality improvements found in pa-tients undergoing CBT, but the results found in this category are modest.

In conclusion, this review provides concurrent evidence to the research field of schizophre-nia treatment, especially on CBTs efficacy on lowering positive symptoms in patients. Im-portantly this review is in accordance with the previous research in recommending CBT to be used as an adjunctive treatment with medication to ensure the best results for patients. The effects of CBT on the cognitive functions of patients is a topic explored in this review but ultimately needs more research to draw conclusions.