A randomized clinical trial of inpatient family intervention. IV. Followup results for subjects with schizophrenia.

Overview

This is the last of a series of four papers, here focussing on schizophrenia, which report followup data up to 18 months from a randomized clinical trial of a psychoeducational family intervention (IFI), which was added to medication and limited to the inpatient phase of treatment, after which post-hospital care was not controlled. Our data suggested that patients with poor prehospital functioning (i.e., the chronic patients) may benefit from inpatient family intervention, but this therapeutic effect appears to be limited to females and does not appear until 18 months postadmission. Families of patients with schizophrenia also show benefit from having received IFI, the effect is seen earlier than with the patients, and is associated with achieving the goals of IFI. The results in the IFI group could not be accounted for by improved post-hospital medication compliance, but they may be related to this group's greater tendency to obtain further family treatment after discharge.