SU131. Efficacy of Cognitive Behavior Therapy in Early Psychosis

Abstract

Background: Early psychosis program guidelines and recommendations frequently include Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) (White et al, 2015), yet little work has been done to synthesize the literature on CBT's effectiveness in this population. Specifcally, no prior meta-analyses have been conducted that primarily focus on the effcacy of CBT for symptoms of early psychosis. The current work aims to fll this gap and assesses the overall effcacy of CBT for the reduction of psychotic symptoms (ie, positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and total symptoms) in the early psychosis population. The meta-analytic data presented represent synthesized effect sizes from 23 studies of CBT with early psychosis samples. Methods: For the current study, early psychosis is defned as the frst 5 years of a psychotic disorder (eg, schizophrenia, schizoaffective). A literature search was conducted to identify relevant articles through December 2015. Both randomized controlled trials and nonrandomized studies were considered for inclusion. Means and standard deviations for symptom data were extracted, and Hedge's g was calculated for each study. Given that it is statistically inappropriate to combine effect sizes from between-group and within-subject data (Borenstein et al, 2009; Lipsey and Wilson, 2001), separate meta-analyses were conducted containing between-group data or within-subject data for each symptom outcome. Data were analyzed using random-effects models. Standardized mean differences effect sizes were cal-culated for each outcome of interest, resulting in 6 separate meta-analyses. Results: For the between-group analyses, CBT was more effective at reducing positive symptoms than control treatments (k = 13, g = 0.18, P