Emerging psychotherapeutic approaches to addressing self-experience in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Growing awareness that many who are diagnosed with schizophrenia recover has spurred the development of new psychosocial approaches to treatment. These new approaches include forms of individual and group psychotherapy whose focus extends beyond reducing symptoms and improving skills to subjective outcomes related to sense of self. This paper introduces an issue of In Session which presents six case reports which illustrating these approaches in differing international contexts. First, we explore the larger issues of subjective outcomes from schizophrenia. We then discuss each of the papers separately along with implications of these papers as a group for how treatment might promote the recapturing of a sense of self or place in the world.