Styles of Recovery from Acute Schizophrenia.

The concept of recovery styles from acute psychoses is reviewed and related to previous studies of coping with serious physical illnesses, ongoing controversy in the field of psychotherapy of schizophrenia and previous recovery styles studies by McGlashan and his co-workers at NIMH in the mid-1970s. Recovery style is defined as a person's way of coping with acute psychosis in terms of his characteristic ways of coping with stress. Two general types of recovery styles, integration and sealing-over, are defined and a scale for rating recovery style on the basis of information contained in case records is developed in a pilot study. A sample of fifty-five first-admitted schizophrenics meeting study criteria is drawn consecutively from admissions to an urban public hospital and rated for recovery style, premorbid personality, duration of illness, and levels of psychopathology on admission and on discharge. This cohort is followed-up for two to four years for aftercare attendance and re-hospitalization. It is hypothesized that recovery style will increase the portion of variance in outcome explained by predictor variables, that integrators will attend their initial aftercare appointments more than sealers and that sealers will be rehospitalized more than integrators. Results tend to support study hypotheses: recovery style appears to be independent of other predictor variables in the study, integrating seems to be strongly associated with aftercare attendance, and sealers are re-hospitalized more than integrators over the follow-up period. Implications for mental health services and prospects for future research are discussed.PhDClinical psychologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159605/1/8324242.pd