ive behavioral treatment is a way to change the patients thoughts by changes in their behavior. This treatment encompasses education for the patient about their problem while incorporating response prevention and exposure. Exposure is putting the patient in contact with something that they would traditionally avoid. In the case of Schizophrenia, the patient would be put in contact with other human beings and be forced to interact with them. Response prevention, is simply limiting the reaction of the patient to the negative stimulus. For example, when a schizophrenic is intimidated by a situation, they tend to run away or revert to a inactive or even catatonic state. The response prevention treatment would try to pull the patient out of that reaction. This type of treatment has been most effective in the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and is being looked at in combination with the dosage treatments.However, the most important thing to remember is that Schizophrenia is a organic disease and that its most effective treatments will be ones that effect the chemistry of the brain and not necessarily the behavior that the patient exhibits as a result of the patient's brain chemistry. Although, behavioral treatment is important, the most important aspect of the treatment has to be controlling the release of dopamine, and the other factors in the treatment must be secondary.Another point of difference in the theory of treatment of schizophrenia is the dosage. Some doctors and researchers say that a low-dose strategy is the one that works. "After 30 years of what might be called guesswork, researchers have finally found the optimal starting dose for the most popular anti-psychotic drug on the market, and it's much lower than is often prescribed. Using positron emission tomography (PET) scans and clinical observations, investigators at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry have determined that the best starting dose ...
