A Survey Towards Holistic Management of Schizophrenia

Abstract

Holistic management of schizophrenia involves main stream pharmacological intervention, complimentary medicine intervention, therapeutic intervention, and other psychosocial factors, such as accommodation, education, job training, employment, relationship, friendship, exercise, overall well-being, smoking, substance abuse, suicide prevention, stigmatisation, recreation, entertainment, violent behaviour, arrangement of public trusteeship and guardianship, day-day-living skill, integration with community, management of overweight due to medications, and other health complications related to medications amongst others. Our review shows that there is no integrated survey by combining all these factors. We are conducting an international web based survey to evaluate the significance of all these factors and present them in a unified manner. We believe this investigation will contribute positively towards holistic management of schizophrenia. There will be two surveys. In the pharmacological intervention survey, five popular drugs for schizophrenia will be chosen and their efficacy as well as harmful side effects will be evaluated in a scale of 0-10. This survey will be done by psychiatrists. In the second survey, each element of therapeutic intervention and psychosocial factors will be evaluated according to their significance in a scale of 0-10. This survey will be done by care givers, psychologists, case managers, and case workers. For the first survey, we will contact the professional bodies of the psychiatrists in English speaking countries and request them to ask their members to participate in the survey. For the second survey, we will contact the professional bodies of clinical psychologist and care givers in English speaking countries and request them to ask their members to participate in the survey. Additionally for both the surveys, we will contact the relevant professionals through personal contact networks. For both the surveys, mean, mode, median, standard deviation, and net promoter score will be calculated for each factor and presented then in a statistically significant manner. Subsequently, each factor will be ranked according to their statistical significance. Additionally, country specific variation will be highlighted to identify the variation pattern. The results of these surveys will identify the relative significance of each type of pharmacological intervention, each type of therapeutic intervention, and each type of psychosocial factor. The determination of this relative importance will definitely contribute to the improvement in quality of life for individuals with schizophrenia.