Open Dialogue Approach: Treatment principles and preliminary resulats of a two-year follow-up on first episode schizophrenia. Ethical and Human Sciences and Services

As part of the Need- Adapted Finnish model, the Open Dialogue (OD) approach aims at treating psychotic patients at their home. Treatment involves patient’s social network and starts within 24 hours after contact. Responsibility for the entire treatment process rests with the same team in both inpatient and outpatient settings. The general aim is to generate dialogue to construct words for the experiences, which exist in psychotic symptoms. As part of the Finnish National Acute Psychosis Integrated Treatment multicentre project (API project), three comparisons were made: 1) patients from the initial phase of OD (API group, N=22) were compared historically with patients from the later phase of OD (ODAP group, Open Dialogue in Acute Psychosis, N=23)). 2 and 3) The API (N=22) and ODAP (N=23) groups, both in Western Lapland were compared separately with schizophrenic patients (Comparison group, N=14) from another API research center who were hospitalized and received conventional treatment. Compared to the Comparison group, the API patients were hospitalized for fewer days, family meetings were organized more often and neuroleptic medication was used in fewer cases