Pilot Study of the Impact of a Family Education Program on Relatives of Recent-Onset Schizophrenic Patients

Abstract

It is assumed that advances in the technology of family education gained from broad psychosocial research programs with schizophrenic patients and their relatives (this volume, Chap 10, Goldstein, 1981) will be adapted and utilized in a variety of settings. Hospitals, professional training centers, community mental health centers as well as relative and patient support groups all desire new and more impactful ways of delivering information to their members. Specific analysis of the educational components of these long-term treatment programs may be especially important for programs in hospitals or community settings which can offer family education but may not have the resources to conduct a full-scale family therapy program. In theory, educational component analyses may allow program coordinators to direct available resources in ways which will benefit the most clients. However, there may be a tendency to enthusiastically adopt family education, abstracting it from broader intervention programs, without understanding that the family’s experience of education may be very different when such material is presented as a self-contained unit. Thus, as the technology of family education develops in the context of broader intervention programs, parallel research focused on family response to education in the absence of family therapy will increase our knowledge of the effects of family education programs in different therapeutic or support contexts.