Clients with Schizophrenia

Running head: Clients with Schizophrenia

Counseling Approaches for Clients with Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia can be a very devastating disorder for clients. The symptoms of schizophrenia are usually divided into positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms include hallucinations and delusions while negative symptoms manifest in social isolation, negative or flat affect and a general lack of emotion. Most clients with schizophrenia will be required to take typical or atypical antipsychotic medications such as perphenazine, clozapine, olanzapine and risperidone. However, when it comes to counseling approaches for these clients there are many different possibilities. Cognitive behavioral therapy is used regularly and is among the most popular approaches. This paper will discuss cognitive behavioral therapy along with six additional theoretical approaches including functional cognitive behavioral therapy, pyschoeducational, psychotherapy, open dialogue, neurocognitive enhancement, and multimodal integrative cognitive stimulating group therapy.

Schizophrenia can be a very devastating disorder for clients. The symptoms of schizophrenia are usually divided into positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms include hallucinations and delusions and are often referred to as psychotic manifestations. Hallucinations involve sensing things that others do not sense such as seeing or hearing something no one else is aware of; delusions are characterized by assigning unusual meaning to normal events or having false beliefs in spite of invalidating evidence (Schizophrenia.com, 1996-2004). Negative symptoms include social isolation, negative or flat affect and a general lack of emotion and usually persist when a client is not experiencing a high level of positive symptoms.

Positive symptoms of schizophrenia can be extremely disruptive to a client’s life. Because of this, schizophrenia is often treated with antipsychotic medication that suppresses dopamine...