Practice principles of cognitive enhancement therapy for schizophrenia

Cognitive Enhancement Therapy (CET) is a developmental approach to the rehabilitation of schizophrenia patients that attempts to facilitate an abstracting and "gistful" social cognition as a compensatory alternative to the more demanding and controlled cognitive strategies that often characterize schizophrenia as well as much of its treatment. Selected cognitive processes that developmentally underlie the capacity to acquire adult social cognition have been operationalized in the form of relevant interactive software and social group exercises. Treatment methods address the impairments, disabilities, and social handicaps associated with cognitive styles that appear to underlie the positive, negative, and disorganized symptom domains of schizophrenia. Style-related failures in secondary rather than primary socialization, particularly social cognitive deficits in context appraisal and perspective taking, are targeted goals. Illustrative examples of the techniques used to address social and nonsocial cognitive deficits are provided, together with encouraging preliminary observations regarding the efficacy of CET.