Compliance therapy: a randomised controlled trial in schizophrenia

I was intrigued to read this paper but noted that the authors did not
make it clear whether they were, in fact, offering compliance therapy.
Surguladze et al (2002) demonstrated that, with a 2-day interactive
course, it is possible to change trainees attitudes to both patients and
compliance/concordance issues. However, it did take 2 days and a large
amount of participative learning. We know that reading manuals is a very
poor way of changing behaviour. We also know that maintaining models of
psychological intervention is not straightforward in practice. When
offering a psychological or behavioural intervention it would seem prudent
to check that it is "exactly what it says on the tin". It may well be that
what was delivered in this study was not compliance therapy, as described
in the manual, but business as usual.

Simon Surguladze, Philip Timms, and Anthony S. David
Teaching psychiatric trainees ‘compliance therapy’
Psychiatr. Bull., Jan 2002; 26: 12 - 15.

Competing interests:
I have run compliance therapy courses