The Comparison of the Effectiveness of Behavioral Activation and Psychosocial on Mental Cognitive Functions in Women with Chronic Schizophrenia

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of behavioral activation and psychosocial rehabilitation on verbal mental cognitive functions, abstraction and attention of women with chronic Schizophrenia. The research design was quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest with control group and follow-up. The statistical population of the study consisted of all women with chronic schizophrenia of Paravar Comprehensive Rehabilitation Center for Chronic Psychiatric Patients in Shahreza that 45 individuals were selected through purposive sampling and randomly divided into three groups of 15 each with behavioral activation, psychosocial rehabilitation and control. Participants in the two experimental groups completed in 12 sessions of 90-minute psychosocial activation and psychosocial rehabilitation, but the control group received no intervention. Subjects responded to the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test in two stages. Research data were analyzed by variance analytical method with repetitive measurement. The result showed that behavioral activation intervention increased verbal mental cognitive effectively and improved attention of women with chronic schizophrenia in the post-test phase. The results also showed that psychosocial rehabilitation could improve the verbal abstraction of women with chronic schizophrenia effectively in two stages, pre-test and post-test, and its effect remained constant over time. Therefore, behavioral activation intervention can be used to improve verbal mental cognitive functions, attention and psychosocial rehabilitation to improve the verbal abstraction of patients with chronic schizophrenia.