Cognitive behavioral therapy for schizophrenic psychoses: Principles of evidence-based disorder-specific psychotherapy [Kognitive Verhaltenstherapie bei schizophrenen Psychosen: Grundzüge einer evidenzbasierten, störungsspezifischen Psychotherapie]

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be regarded as an established intervention for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. Based on randomized clinical trials and meta-analyses, which found evidence for the efficacy of CBT, almost all evidence-based treatment guidelines recommend CBT for routine treatment. This paper demonstrates that in psychoses CBT is a disorder-specific adaptation of general principles of CBT for the treatment of patients suffering from schizophrenia. The CBT procedure draws on cognitive models of symptoms for the identification of treatment targets and focuses on everyday problems of patients by implementing a self-management approach. Fostering motivation and the application of behavioral and cognitive treatment strategies characterize this approach. If the patients live in a family, other family members should be involved in order to improve crisis management and problem solving within the family. A major challenge for the future is to improve the availability of CBT under the German conditions of routine mental health care. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.