Grant: Project Grant - PA: CMA Foundation - Virtual Care

Schizophrenia-spectrum disorders are the most persistent, debilitating, and economically burdensome mental illnesses worldwide. Only 50% of individuals with schizophrenia experience symptom remission and most experience persistent functional disability in domains of vocational achievement, independent living, and interpersonal relationships. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a psychological intervention originally developed to treat depression, and subsequently adapted to treat schizophrenia spectrum disorders. CBT has demonstrated moderate treatment effects in multiple meta-analyses and is widely recommended for the treatment of schizophrenia in international guidelines. CBT can improve residual symptoms for individuals taking antipsychotic medication and can improve symptoms for individuals not taking medication. Despite recommendations that all individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders are offered CBT as a component of their treatment, 40% of the Canadian population live in geographic locations where CBTp is unavailable and the majority of people with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders do not actually receive CBT. The current study is a randomized controlled trial examining the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy delivered through virtual care compared to cognitive behavioural therapy delivered in person and treatment as usual. This study will also contain a qualitative analysis of the experience of receiving virtual CBT to inform how to better adapt CBT for virtual delivery.