Psychological and social treatments: course and outcome

Major trials of cognitive-behavioural therapy, personal therapy and family interventions were published this year. Their findings have major significance for clinical services and should be widely digested. Key studies and conceptual frameworks underpinning the early intervention paradigm have also appeared. Naturalistic investigations of psychosis in second generation immigrants to the UK and in the population of origin provided overwhelming evidence that sociocultural influences in the context of low genetic risk provide a significant pathway to psychotic illness, which may be reflected in the content of psychotic symptoms. Curr Opin Psychiatry 12:61-66. (C) 1999 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.