Development and validation of psychiatric social work intervention package to reduce expressed emotion towards persons with Schizophrenia

Background: Expressed Emotion is an important characteristic of the family atmosphere that has been identified as a foreseeing reason for relapse of symptoms among individuals with Schizophrenia. Previous studies have highlighted the significance of psycho-social intervention alongside pharmacotherapy to get better outcomes and help with the speedy recovery of individuals with schizophrenia.  The objective of the present paper was to develop and validate the Psychiatric Social Work (PSW) intervention package. Methods and Material: A ten-session structural intervention package, which includes Professional Social work methods, principles, therapeutic activities, brainstorming, case vignettes, role plays, and video clippings on each day’s topic. A handout of the take-home message of each session was developed in brief, in two languages (English and Kannada) for distribution to the caregivers. The intervention and methodology were given to nine experienced mental health professionals (MHPs) for face and content validation. The pilot study was done on ten caregivers to check the feasibility of the package. Results: All the subject experts agreed that the objective and content used for each session was appropriate. The majority (77.2%) said that the duration used for each session was adequate, and 88.9% agreed that the methodology used for each session was suitable. A standardized PSW programme was developed by incorporating the comments of experts. The pilot results endorsed the utility of the PSW intervention package. Conclusion: The PSW programme developed in the present study was found to be useful to the families of persons with schizophrenia, and it can be practiced in a clinical setting