Educational therapies

What are educational therapies? 

Educational therapies for psychiatric illnesses (psychoeducation) are targeted towards increasing a person’s knowledge about their disorder. Educational therapies aim to improve insight and understanding, promote coping and reduce stigma, increase medication adherence, enable behavioural change, and ultimately prevent relapse. Educational sessions can take place individually or in groups with other patients or with family, and are usually incorporated into an ongoing treatment regimen.

What is the evidence for educational therapies?

Moderate to high quality evidence suggests psychoeducation in general has a medium-sized benefit for reducing relapse and rehospitalisation rates, and for improving treatment adherence. It also reduces familial high expressed emotion (e.g. critical comments, over-involvement), and improves knowledge about the disorder, patients’ general psychopathology, social functioning and internalised stigma.

September 2020

Last updated at: 3:19 am, 11th September 2020
To view documentation related to this topic download the files below
Fact Sheet Technical Commentary

NeuRA Libraries

Title Colour Legend:
Green - Topic summary is available.
Orange - Topic summary is being compiled.
Red - Topic summary has no current systematic review available.