CSC teams usually include medical support, case management, employment and educational support, and family education and support. It’s important that each patient is included as much as possible in treatment planning as they work together with their support team to make decisions regarding treatment and care.
Here’s who you should consider for your or your loved one’s care team — and how they can each help individuals with schizophrenia manage their symptoms and live well.
1. Psychiatrist
Medical care is typically guided by a psychiatrist — a medical doctor specializing in mental health — who may coordinate treatment with other mental health professionals such as a psychologist, social worker, case manager, or psychiatric nurse.
Medication management is a cornerstone of schizophrenia treatment. Finding the right option and dosage is one of the primary goals of psychiatric care for this condition. Psychiatrists can prescribe and manage medications for schizophrenia.
Talk therapy is another key component of care. It may be provided by a psychiatrist or by another mental health professional who coordinates closely with the psychiatrist to help ensure that any medications provided get the desired outcomes.
2. Primary Care Provider
An individual’s primary care provider can play a key role in a schizophrenia treatment team.
3. Social Worker
Social workers are professionals that may help clients with disabilities, life-threatening diseases, or social issues like inadequate housing or unemployment, for instance. They may also help families with serious domestic conflicts, such as abuse.
Social workers can play a key role in helping people with schizophrenia set and accomplish goals for treatment, as well as with living and participating in their communities.
They can help people with schizophrenia and their families develop a treatment plan and learn more about different interventions that may be helpful alongside medication. Interventions may include individual and family therapy, vocational rehabilitation, or educational assistance. Social workers can also facilitate individual and family therapy sessions.
4. Psychologist
Psychologists are mental health professionals that can evaluate and treat mental health conditions like schizophrenia through individual or family psychotherapy. They can also conduct psychological testing and evaluations.
Certain psychologists, known as clinical psychologists, tend to focus on treating serious mental health conditions (like schizophrenia). However, although they can facilitate psychotherapy, they usually cannot prescribe medication or order blood or imaging tests, unlike psychiatrists.
5. Case Manager
Many people living with severe psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia need assistance coordinating treatment and handling a variety of tasks in their day-to-day lives. Case managers can help people with schizophrenia set goals to work toward and then identify strategies and tools to help achieve those things.
A review of research noted that care management is associated with fewer psychiatric symptoms and better quality of life in people with serious mental illnesses.
Case managers can guide family caregivers to community resources and other tools to support a variety of tasks that might be hard for some people with schizophrenia to manage independently, such as scheduling appointments, managing finances, or finding and keeping a job.
6. Family Caregivers
Family support and caregiving is an essential part of the support team, says Ken Duckworth, MD, chief medical officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and an assistant clinical professor at Harvard University Medical School in Boston. It can be helpful for people with schizophrenia to tell family members and friends about the condition, in order to receive encouragement and get assistance with specific needs, such as transportation to doctor or therapist appointments.
Family therapy is an important way for families to learn how they can best support their loved one (more on the benefits of family therapy below). The right kind of family support has been shown to make a significant difference for patients. A review of research found that certain family interventions are effective at preventing relapse in people with schizophrenia.
