The Effect of Community Re-entry Program on Therapeutic Compliance, Relapse and Rehospitalization of Patients with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders

Introduction: Conventional psychiatric treatments have weaknesses in the treatment of schizophrenia spectrum disorders and have little effect on skill-training and community-based areas. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the role of the Community Re-entry Program as a community-based complementary therapy in increasing therapeutic compliance and reduction of relapse and rehospitalization in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Methods: The present study was performed by quantitative method with repeated measures and using randomized clinical trial (RCT) research design. The statistical population of the study included all patients who were admitted to the acute wards of Raazi Psychiatric Hospital between January 20 and March 20, 2017, with a diagnosis of at least one of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. A total of 80 patients with inclusion criteria were selected by simple random sampling and randomly assigned to the intervention (40 patients) and control (40 patients) groups using a random number table. The Intervention method was the “Community Re-entry Program” which was performed in 16 group sessions with a frequency of 4 sessions per week, in combination with conventional psychiatric treatment in the experimental group, while the patients in the control group received only conventional psychiatric treatment. The only tool used in the present study was a demographic questionnaire and the variables of therapeutic compliance and reduction of relapse and rehospitalization were also evaluated at intervals of 1, 3, and 6 months after discharge through telephone interviews with patients' families. The use of drugs, relapse of the symptoms, and rehospitalization of patients were evaluated in the mentioned time periods. Collected information and data were analyzed using SPSS-16. Results: The results showed that the implementation of community re-entry program in combination with conventional psychiatric treatment had an effect on increasing therapeutic compliance ( = 40/145, P= 0/001) and reduction of relapse ( = 45/54, P= 0/001) and rehospitalization rates ( = 40/75, P= 0/001) in patients. Conclusions: The Community Re-entry Program, as an adjunct to conventional psychiatric treatment, is one of the effective interventions to increase therapeutic compliance and reduce the rate of relapse and rehospitalization. In order to compensate for the weakness of conventional psychiatric treatment in increasing therapeutic compliance and reducing the relapse and rehospitalization rate of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, non-pharmacological complementary therapies such as Community Re-entry Programs can be used.