All about the identified schizophrenia recovery factors and schizophrenia recovery model

1. The relationship with the Family: while stressful family relations can lead to a relapse, a family where awareness and emotional support exists, the chances of relapse get significantly reduced. According to the study, 70% of those patients doing well had well to excellent family relationships.

2. Cases of Substance abuse: according to the research estimates of National Institute of Mental Health the chances of substance abuse during the, lifetime of a schizophrenia patient was 47%, a lot higher than the rate for the others. About three fourth of them experienced it before schizophrenia treatment, 17.4% experienced it after they developed the disease. However, none of them had a case of excessive drug overdose in at last one year following the onset of the disease and occasional alcoholic consumption was reported by just two of them.

3. Untreated psychosis duration: the longer the time gap between the occurrence of the first symptoms and the first treatment, the lesser the degree and the more is the time required for remission. Among those experiencing recovery from schizophrenia, only 13% had a symptom-treatment time gap exceeding one year.

4. Preliminary response to the medications: the long term effects of the medications can be predicted by noticing the start of the improvement process. Among the selected candidates, 87% experienced great improvement right from the initial stages of treatment.

5. Treatment adherence: the long and sort term recovery gets hampered when medication is not taken properly. The study participants all had taken their medication sincerely.

6. Supportive therapies: A positive-physiatrist relationship helps in improvement. 91% participants were experiencing psychotherapy with 78% admitting that the therapy was helping greatly in the recovery of schizophrenia.

7. The Cognitive abilities: One’s neurocognitive factors like sustained attention, working memory, and good visual perception can have a strong impact of the process of recovery in schizophrenia. All the research participants had normal-almost normal capabilities with perceptual skills, problem solving functioning and working verbal memory.

8. Socializing skills: the length of disability that is caused by schizophrenia is directly related to the negative symptoms of poor skills relating to the social expectations and social interaction. The study participants barely carried these negative symptoms.

9. Patient’s personal history: factors that have occurred prior to the disease onset or the premorbid factors, like IQ, education, age and rapidity of the onset and history of work and social life can also directly affect the treatment results. Among the selected participants, it was noticed that education played a major role and served as the premorbid history measure. While 70% of them, before experiencing schizophrenia and recovery had passed graduated their college, 13% had completed two college years. Three fourth of the rest of them had even been working in full time jobs prior to their illness.

10. Accessibility to care: Comprehensive, continuous coordinated and a consumer-oriented treatment is important for recovery. During the survey 91% participants agreed to have received psychotherapy and antipsychotic medications, with 47.8% having also received training in social skills, with 56.5% enjoying family participation, 61% benefiting from groups of self help and 26% receiving vocational rehabilitation.