Clinical assessment of improvement

Abstract

Members of our family therapy staff group have treated well over a hundred families by now, most of whom had an adolescent or young adult schizophrenic member. This would have been a sufficient sample from which to draw some meaningful statistical conclusions, if we had been able to establish the necessary scientific controls by evaluating a sample of comparable schizophrenic families who either had received no treatment or some other form of treatment. We have not been able, however, to achieve such a controlled assessment of the effects of family treatment, nor, to our knowledge, has anyone else. We shall resort therefore, to our clinical impressions and to reports made by the families themselves, in an attempt to appraise the results of our therapeutic endeavor with the families.