New training method to improve care for schizophrenia patients

Today’s care provision for schizophrenia patients pays too little attention to patients’ sense of meaning and coping with loss. Care providers mainly concentrate on the medical and psychiatric aspects of the disorder. Their lack of understanding for the patients’ existential suffering and associated questions about life and death makes the patients feel that they are not being heard. This in turn leads to a sense of helplessness among both care providers and patients. Considerable improvements can be made if the treatment methods are adapted. This is the result of research conducted by Hanneke Muthert, for which she will be awarded a PhD by the University of Groningen on 8 November 2007.

Processes of coping with loss play an important role in schizophrenia. Patients are faced with various types of loss: loss of health, of activities and practical skills, of social contacts and dreams, of desires and expectations. Care providers mainly focus on recognition of loss, in other words accepting the schizophrenic disorder or psychotic vulnerability. However, paying attention to patients’ quest for a sense of meaning to everything that is happening to them and recognition of the uniqueness of their experiences is at least as important, Muthert states. The focus thus shifts to providing a sense of meaning and purpose and a philosophy of life.

Insufficient self-reflection

One important finding in Muthert’s research is that support in coping with loss does not appear to be an obvious ingredient in care provision. Various causes play a role in this. Care providers often regard the quest for meaning as a private matter. In addition, it is often assumed that complicated questions about life and death do not play an important role among this target group. Care providers find it very difficult not to give in to their tendency to work in a solution-driven way. In addition, they also largely fail to reflect on their own powerlessness, sense of meaning and coping with loss. As a result, they tend to use their own philosophy of life as a moral standard in their patient contacts.

Training for care providers

Muthert’s conclusions are based on a literature study and analysis of practical cases from the mental health clinic GGZ Drenthe in Assen. In addition, she developed a new loss coping model and accompanying training course that will help care providers recognize which questions patients are struggling with and better support patients by ‘hearing and seeing’ and ‘recognizing’ their questions about life and death. Evaluation of the training course shows that significant improvements are made in these fields. This course is the first of its kind.

Widely deployable

It is important to note that Muthert’s model for coping with loss can also be applied to other situations and other chronic diseases. Think, for example, of coping with loss by family members of Alzheimer’s patients, or after a death in the family. Muthert also states that in addition to doctors and other care providers, spiritual care providers can also play an important role in providing care to schizophrenia patients. However, to this end they will have to focus more on coping with loss.

Curriculum Vitae

Hanneke Muthert (Nijkerk, 1973) studied Theology in Groningen and conducted her PhD research at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen and at the psychosis department of GGZ Drenthe. The research was partially financed by Stichting De Open Ankh. Muthert works as a spiritual carer at GGZ Drenthe and as a lecturer at the University of Groningen. The title of her thesis is Verlies en verlangen. Over verliesverwerking bij schizofrenie . Een kader, een training voor hulpverleners en de rol van de geestelijk verzorger nader belicht [Loss and longing. How schizophrenics cope with loss. A framework, a training course for care providers and the role of the spiritual carer in more detail]. Her supervisor was Prof. P.M.G.P. Vandermeersch.

Note for the press

Further information: Hanneke Muthert, tel. 06-11390609, 050-313 9882, e-mail: j.k.muthert@rug.nl