Cognitive Enhancement Therapy for Early-Stage Schizophrenia

Summary

This study will determine the effectiveness of cognitive enhancement therapy (CET) in treating cognitive abnormalities in people experiencing the early stages of schizophrenia.

Conditions

• Schizophrenia

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Cognitive enhancement therapy (CET)

Using 80 to 100 hours of graduated exercises in computer assisted training, coupled with structured but unrehearsed in vivo social group interactions, CET tries to shift an early developmental reliance on effortful, serial and verbatim cognitive processing to a more gistful, less effortful and spontaneous abstraction of social themes. CET uses attention, memory and problem solving software from three exercises from Ben-Yishay's Orientation Remediation Module (the Attention Reaction Conditioner, Zero Accuracy Conditioner, and Time Estimates) that are graduated in difficulty and designed to enhance vigilance, selective attention, the ability to shift between auditory and visual modalities, and rapid decision-making.

BEHAVIORAL

Enriched supportive therapy (EST)

EST is the commonly recommended (Spaulding 1992) treatment for control and experimental subjects in psychosocial trials. EST is a two-staged treatment that requires weekly one-hour sessions in Phase 1 and biweekly sessions in Phase 2. Some practice principles (e.g., psychoeducation and relaxation training) are provided during the group exercises for CET patients, but individually for EST patients. No attempt is made to control for hours of contact between EST and CET, since offering three hours of supportive therapy to EST subjects is neither logistically feasible nor faithful to the goals and methods of supportive therapy. Further, neurobiological hypotheses related to treatment specificity would be best tested by clear differences in treatment intensity and content.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

  collaborator NIH

• Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Matcheri S Keshavan, MD · University of Pittsburgh

• Gerard E Hogarty, MSW · University of Pittsburgh

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

16 Years

Max Age

51 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2001-08-31

Primary Completion

2009-08-31

Completion

2016-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations