AUTHOR=Hasson-Ohayon Ilanit , Mashiach-Eizenberg Michal , Lavi-Rotenberg Adi , Roe David 

TITLE=Randomized Controlled Trial of Adjunctive Social Cognition and Interaction Training, Adjunctive Therapeutic Alliance Focused Therapy, and Treatment As Usual Among Persons With Serious Mental Illness

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2019

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00364

DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00364

ISSN=1664-0640

ABSTRACT=As one of the areas of greatest concern for people with serious mental illness (SMI) are unmet social needs, psychosocial interventions have been developed to address them. The current study utilized a randomized controlled trial to examine the effectiveness of social cognition and interaction training (SCIT) versus a therapeutic alliance focused intervention (TAFT) versus a treatment-as-usual (TAU) control group on social functioning and quality of life as primary outcomes and social cognition variables as secondary outcomes. 63 persons between the ages of 24 to 69 with serious mental illness (41 man and 22 woman), completers of the trial (23 in SCIT, 20 in TAFT and 20 in TAU) , were assessed at baseline,  completion, and at a 3-month follow-up with measurements assessing social cognition (The Facial Emotion Identification Task; The Faux pas test; The Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire; The Social Skills Performance Assessment), social functioning (The Wisconsin Social Quality of Life Scale), and therapeutic alliance (Adapted version for group of system for observing family therapy alliance; Friedlander et al, 2006). Results reveal the two interventions were more effective than the control condition (TAU) in reducing attribution bias anger scores, SCIT  was also effective in improving theory of mind (as can be seen in Faux pas test scores), and the TAFT in improving emotion recognition and reducing intentionality attribution bias scores. Improvement was related to therapeutic alliance which did not differ between the two intervention groups. Considering the role of alliance it is recommended to consider the integration of the two studied interventions with other approaches that emphasize alliance and reflection.