Effectiveness of Cognitive Retraining In Chronic Mental Illness

Introduction: Cognitive impairment is the core feature in several chronic mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar mood disorder. Its effect permeates to areas like work, social relationships and capacity for independent living. It determines the rate of rehabilitation and there lies the need to study cognitive retraining as a measure of effectiveness for psychiatric rehabilitation. Method: A sample of 10 patients was chosen for the study educated upto a minimum of Vth Grade and aged between 30-45 years. All ten patients were assessed prior to intervention and post intervention on Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, Global Assessment of Functioning and selected tests from NIMHANS neuropsychological battery for adults (Color trails test, Stroop test, NBack test and WCST). Five patients were randomly selected for cognitive retraining (12 sessions for 4 weeks, 3 sessions each week for one hour). Results & Conclusion: The analysis of scores at post intervention suggested no statistically significant differences in performance of intervention group and control group in the areas of attention, working memory, response inhibition and set shifting. However differences in mean for time taken on color trails and total correct scores, total errors and overall stroop effect, indicates a positive trend for improvement in these functions in the intervention group post cognitive retraining. The one month intervention duration is a likely limiting factor.