Background: Negative symptoms are frequent in patients with schizophrenia and are associated with marked impairments in social functioning. The efficacy of drug-based treatments and psychological interventions on primary negative symptoms remains limited. The Positive Emotions Programme for Schizophrenia (PEPS) is designed to improve pleasure and motivation in schizophrenia patients by targeting emotion regulation and cognitive skills relevant to apathy and anhedonia. The main hypothesis of this study is that patients who attend 8 one-hour sessions of PEPS and treatment as usual (TAU) will have lower total apathy-avolition and anhedonia-asociality composite scores on the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) than patients who attend only TAU. Methods: Eighty participants diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder were randomized to receive either TAU or PEPS + TAU. The participants were assessed by independent evaluators before randomization (T0), in a post-test after 8 weeks of treatment (T1) and at a 6-month follow-up (T2). Results: The post-test results and 6-month follow-up assessments according to an intention-to-treat analysis showed that the apathy and anhedonia composite scores on the SANS indicated statistically greater clinical improvements in PEPS participants than in non-PEPS participants. In the post-test, anhedonia but not apathy was significantly improved, thus favouring the PEPS condition. These results were sustained at the 6-month follow-up. Conclusions: PEPS is an effective intervention to reduce anhedonia in schizophrenia. PEPS is a short, easy-to-use, group-based, freely available intervention that is easy to implement in a variety of environments (ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02593058).

ObjectivesThe efficacy of drug-based treatments and psychological interventions on the primary negative symptoms of schizophrenia remains limited. Recent literature has distinguished negative symptoms associated with a diminished capacity to experience, from those associated with a limited capacity for expression. The positive emotions program for schizophrenia (PEPS) is a new method that specifically aims to reduce the syndrome of a diminished capacity to experience.MethodsThe intervention’s vital ingredients were identified through a literature review of emotion in schizophrenia and positive psychology. The program has been beta-tested on various groups of health-care professionals.ResultsA detailed description of the final version of PEPS is presented here. The French version of the program is freely downloadable.ConclusionPEPS is a specific, short, easy to use, group-based intervention to improve pleasure, and motivation in schizophrenia. It was built considering a recovery-oriented approach to schizophrenia.

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L'analyse interactionnelle ouvre des perspectives pour la formation des infirmiers. Seize étudiants et trois enseignants ont mené une analyse interactionnelle d'activités soignantes filmées visant à comprendre la pratique du dévoilement de soi en psychiatrie. En quoi l'usage en formation des outils de l'analyse interactionnelle constitue-t-il une ressource pour l'acquisition de compétences professionnelles en psychiatrie ? Nous montrons comment ce dispositif de formation constitue une ressource dans la professionnalisation des infirmiers pour : a) l'acquisition de savoirs théoriques cliniques, b) l'articulation de ces savoirs avec des activités professionnelles projetées, c) une posture descriptive non-jugeante utile à l'observation clinique.

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