Cognitive Remediation for Social Cognition in Schizophrenia and Related Disorders

Schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders are associated with major functioning difficulties encompassing various areas of everyday life such as social interactions or school and work performance. Cognition, and more particularly social cognition, defined as the mental processes underlying social interactions, is considered as one of the best predictors of functioning in schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders. Social cognitive deficits thus represent a promising treatment target to promote functional recovery. Cognitive remediation (CR) is a behavioural intervention that can improve social cognitive deficits and clinical symptoms and moderate to large effect sizes have been reported. While there is great excitement that such interventions can also improve functioning, very few CR program for social cognition have used a personalized approach to tailor treatment to individual difficulties despite the benefit of personalizing CR treatment in schizophrenia. The program Remédiation Cognitive de la Cognition Sociale en Schizophrénie (RC2S+) is a personalized CR treatment targeting social cognition using virtual reality to emulate daily social interactions. Two case studies conducted in France with people with schizophrenia have demonstrated acceptability and feasibility of in-person RC2S+ while providing preliminary evidence for efficacy with the report of significant improvement of social cognitive and functional difficulties. While these preliminary results are encouraging, the program has never been used in Canada. Psychosocial intervention, and particularly those targeting social cognition, need to be culturally adapted. Thus, a preliminary study is necessary to assess if RC2S+ is culturally adapted to the social norms and rules of French and English-speaking Canadians. Further, this study needs to consider the actual context of the COVID-19 pandemic which has highlighted the important vulnerability of people with psychotic disorders and the need to adapt evidence-based interventions such as CR to increase access to mental healthcare services. Online interventions have rapidly developed in the last year in response to COVID-19 and these interventions address important factors that are known to limit access to psychiatric care in people with psychotic disorders. A remote version will however require an acceptability and feasibility assessment.

Our main objective is to assess the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effect of the remoted RC2S+. To reach this goal, we will, 1) Translate the RC2S+ program in English and adapt the program for French Canadians and 2) Determine the acceptability, the feasibility and the preliminary effect of the remoted RC2S+.

Twenty-six participants with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorder aged 18 years or older and who present with at least one social cognitive impairment will be recruited. They will be initially assessed for social cognition as well as clinical outcomes (e.g. symptoms, recovery, functioning). Then, participants will receive 24 biweekly individual sessions of RC2S+ of 1 hour with a therapist. Intra-session questionnaires will be administered at different timepoints to the participants and the therapists to assess therapeutic alliance, motivation toward treatment as well as the satisfaction regarding treatment. At the end of treatment, participants will be reassessed with the similar measures as baseline.

This study will provide the first insight of the preliminary effect of RC2S+ administered remotely, in addition to providing French-Canadian and English version of this novel program. The results of the current study will provide relevant information to improve the program and its delivery for a future efficacy study.

Inclusion criteria

• DSM-5 diagnosis of schizophrenia or a related psychotic disorder
• Being followed and treated by a clinician of the Douglas Mental Health University Hospital
• Being 18 or older
• Having an objective difficulty in social cognition (i.e. emotion recognition, theory of mind, attributional bias, social perception) defined as a performance equal of below 1 standard deviation from the normative group on one of the following measures: Penn Emotion Recognition Task (ER-40; Emotion recognition), Combined Stories Test (COST; Theory of mind), Social Knowledge test (SKT; Social knowledge) or Interpersonal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire (IPSAQ; Attributional style). This criterion is mandatory since we need to be able to remediate a difficulty during cognitive remediation.
• Being considered symptomatically stable and capable of using the online platforms, as judged by their primary clinicians (i.e., psychiatrist, case manager, psychologist)
• Having access to digital technology, Internet and access to a private space (a room where the participant can be alone)
• Being able to nominate an emergency contact

Exclusion criteria

• Evidence of an organic cause for cognitive difficulties (e.g. neurological disease, history of brain trauma)
• History of mental retardation or autism spectrum disorder
• Being hospitalized at the time of recruitment
• Inability to speak or read French or English