What are the goals of treatment in schizophrenia?
The primary goal of treatment is to reduce what are called the “positive symptoms” of schizophrenia: hearing voices, the thought disorder and other problems in thinking, changes in mood. Medication should help with all those things. Counseling, psychotherapy and social rehabilitation can help with more of what we call “negative symptoms.” This often gets lost at first because you’re so busy treating the positive symptoms, but people also lose motivation, the capacity to relate socially, and the capacity to organize themselves as they used to do before.
