Illness management is a broad set of strategies designed to help individuals with serious mental illness collaborate with professionals, reduce their susceptibility to the illness, and cope effectively with their symptoms. Recovery occurs when people with mental illness discover, or rediscover, their strengths and abilities for pursuing personal goals and develop a sense of identity that allows them to grow beyond their mental illness. The authors discuss the concept of recovery from psychiatric disorders and then review research on professional-based programs for helping people manage their mental illness. Research on illness management for persons with severe mental illness, including 40 randomized controlled studies, indicates that psychoeducation improves people's knowledge of mental illness; that behavioral tailoring helps people take medication as prescribed; that relapse prevention programs reduce symptom relapses and rehospitalizations; and that coping skills training using cognitive-behavioral techniques reduces the severity and distress of persistent symptoms. The authors discuss the implementation and dissemination of illness management programs from the perspectives of mental health administrators, program directors, people with a psychiatric illness, and family members.

Previous functional brain imaging studies suggest that the ability to infer the intentions and mental states of others (social cognition) is mediated by medial prefrontal cortex. Little is known about the anatomy of empathy and forgiveness. We used functional MRI to detect brain regions engaged by judging others' emotional states and the forgivability of their crimes. Ten volunteers read and made judgements based on social scenarios and a high level baseline task (social reasoning). Both empathic and forgivability judgements activated left superior frontal gyrus, orbitofrontal gyrus and precuneus. Empathic judgements also activated left anterior middle temporal and left inferior frontal gyri, while forgivability judgements activated posterior cingulate gyrus. Empathic and forgivability judgements activate specific regions of the human brain, which we propose contribute to social cohesion.

Although the results of this systematic review on the collateral outcomes provide support for the potential of cCBT, these outcomes need to be better assessed within individual e-mental health studies.

The delivery and evaluation of CBSP therapy within a prison is feasible. CBSP therapy offers significant promise in the prevention of prison suicide and an adequately powered randomized controlled trial is warranted.

This article posits that the positive findings for supportive therapy (ST) in recent trials may indicate an important but undervalued aspect of psychosocial interventions for schizophrenia. In developing this thesis, we consider the possible mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of ST observed in recent trials of cognitive behavioral therapy for schizophrenia. We place this evidence in the context of a review of psychological models of mental health, the therapeutic alliance, and research on social cognition and social support in schizophrenia. We conclude this article by describing a new theoretically driven intervention for schizophrenia, functional cognitive-behavioral therapy (FCBT), which improves functional outcomes by integrating evidence-based advances in cognitive behavioral therapy with the strengths of ST approaches.