The Effect of Family Psychoeducational Therapy and Social Skills Training

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effect of Family Psychoeducational Therapy and Social Skills Training on burden, coping skills and social support of caregivers of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and/or schizoaffective disorder at the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) in the Greater Houston Area, Texas. Family Psychoeducational Therapy is described as an educational program for families and patients that also provides families with a variety of ways to handle difficult behaviors at home. The Social Skills Training is a comprehensive service for persons with schizophrenia that target their social skills deficits. The theoretical framework for the treatment program is based on Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977) and the Index of Expressed Emotion (Leff & Vaughn, 1985) that is relevant to the study of caregivers of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and/or schizoaffective disorder. The research design is pretest-posttest one group, cross-sectional and exploratory. The data was collected through self-administered inventories using a purposive sampling of 66 caregivers at NAMI in the Greater Houston Area, Texas. The caregivers completed the following instruments: the Measurement of Objective and Subjective Burden to assess burden, the Family Coping Questionnaire to assess caregiver’s coping skills, and the Social Network Questionnaire to assess social support.