Intensive Treatment of Back-Ward Patients—a Controlled Pilot Study

Deterioration in schizophrenic control groups

“…Unfortunately, in controlled studies (Shatin etal. 1956;Galioni et al 1953) the improvements are not shown to reach significance. Moreover, these patients are taken from the 'back-wards', where many of them are thoroughly institutionalized.…”

“…Despite the widespread impression that improvement is obtained when these methods are employed, there are surprisingly few controlled studies. Of those which have been made, most are concerned with patients in the ' back-wards' of mental hospitals (Galioni, Adams & Tallman, 1953 ;Kamman, Lucero, Meyer & Rechtschaffen, 1954) or, where patients with earlier onset are treated, in wards where the rkgime before the start of treatment tended to be authoritarian and repressive (Powdermaker & Frank, 1953). These studies can also be criticized on methodological grounds in that their control patients were often drawn from different wards from the patients in the experimental group.…”

Group Behaviour in Chronic Schizophrenics Treated with "Meratran"

“…Myerson's (1939) concept of "total push " was an elaboration of this fact. Many current rehabilitation " programmes (Martin, 1950;Klemes, 1951;Galioni et al, 1953) derive much of their early satisfaction from this. It can be said that a true change has been brought about in a group of chronic psychotic patients only if changes occur in other manifestations which cannot be directly related to the efforts of the staff.…”

Objective Evaluation of an Activity Treatment Program for Seriously Regressed Schizophrenic Patients

“…The objective is not to "cure" the disease, but to improve hospital adjustment to a point where the patient is more selfmaintaining and accessible to other forms of treatment. The results of several studies of activity programs (l,2,4,6,7,IO,18,19,20,21) have tended to support the ·assump-tions underlying this treatment technique.The purpose of the present study was to place a severe test on the hypothesis, that chronic schizophrenic patients improve during an activity program, by selecting only the most regressed long-term patients for treatment, and by objectively measuring what changes, if any, could be produced in this group.The problem of devising a satisfactory method of evaluating the response of patients to treatment is a persistent one. Psychiatric judgments of change have not been adequate mainly because of their subjective nature and lack of explicit criteria.…”

“…The objective is not to "cure" the disease, but to improve hospital adjustment to a point where the patient is more selfmaintaining and accessible to other forms of treatment. The results of several studies of activity programs (l,2,4,6,7,IO,18,19,20,21) have tended to support the ·assump-tions underlying this treatment technique.…”