Effectiveness of interventions aimed at social participation in people with schizophrenia: systematic review

Abstract

Introduction

From Occupational Therapy, social participation is considered one of the areas of vital importance in the lives of people with schizophrenia. Therefore, when there is a limitation in participation in this occupational area, it is necessary to generate intervention strategies that favor and enable access to them.

Objectives

Know the effectiveness of different interventions in the occupational area "social participation" in users with schizophrenia.

Method

A bibliographic search was carried out in three databases in the health and social field: Pubmed, Scopus and Web of Science. The inclusion criteria for the selection of articles were: People between 18 and 65 years old with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, published in the last 10 years in English, Spanish and Portuguese, excluding opinion articles and articles with less than 10 participants in the intervention. A total of 13 studies were selected. All papers were evaluated according to a cheklist.

Results

The most effective intervention has been the ACT, with results of; improvement in symptomatic remission of 43.98 pints, comparing with control group; in terms of hospital readmissions, 19.05%; Regarding social functionality, it has had an improvement of 11.36 points; Finally, regarding the quality of life, there has been an improvement of 1.40 points.

Conclusions

Social participation is essential in the psychosocial rehabilitation process of a user with schizophrenia. Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) has shown significantly better results compared to Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR). We must take the results obtained with caution due to the study’s limitations, where the little scientific evidence available on this subject stands out.

Keywords:
Schizophrenia; Occupational Therapy; Community Mental Health Services; Social Participation