IMPROVING COGNITIVE AND FUNCTIONAL SKILLS IN OLDER ADULTS WITH SMI

Cognitive and functional skills training interventions have been shown to improve the everyday functioning of people with severe mental illness, but little attention has specifically been directed at older patients. In two studies, we used technology-based interventions aimed at treatment of cognitive and functional deficits in older patients with severe mental illness to determine whether abbreviated technology oriented training could reduce cognitive and functional skills deficits. In the first study, 40 older patients with schizophrenia were treated with either 15 sessions of cognitive remediation therapy with the Brain HQ program from Posit science or a computer games control. In the second study 20 older schizophrenia patients and 20 healthy older controls were treated with a computerized skills training program. The skills training program led to substantial gains in performance with healthy controls and SMI patients reducing their time to completion of both by over 50% tasks in 4 training sessions.