The effects of family presence and brief family intervention on global outcome for hospitalized schizophrenic patients.

Virtually all modern inpatient psychiatric units operate on the assumptions that family presence, when the identified patient has schizophrenia, does affect outcome and that adding brief family intervention to the treatment prescription will enhance hospital and posthospital outcome. Often the family intervention is believed not adequate in terms of duration or frequency or quality (since trainees are the family therapists), given the standards of some experienced family clinicians. This report addresses these issues by comparing outcome measures for hospitalized patients with schizophrenia by (a) presence of a family and (b) amount and/or kind of family intervention. Most importantly, we wished to learn if global outcome would show change by virtue of family therapy (within the constraints imposed by the above limitations of family intervention).