Culturally adapting family interventions for schizophrenia in Indonesia

<p dir="ltr">The aim of this study was to adapt and refine an evidence-based family intervention for relatives and carers of people with schizophrenia in Java, Indonesia. In low-resource settings, family interventions are one of only three types of interventions recommended for schizophrenia by the World Bank's third edition of disease priorities. Family interventions for psychosis (FIp) have strong evidence for their efficacy in high-income countries. FIp significantly reduce relapse, re-hospitalization, increase adherence to medication regimes, enhance patient functioning and improve family environments.<br><br>The researchers used an existing intervention that is currently approved for widespread use in the NHS (according to National Institute for Clinical Excellence Guidelines) and adapted and refined the intervention to produce a culturally relevant psychosocial intervention. The researchers explored stakeholder priorities for the intervention using an empirically-derived heuristic framework for cultural adaptation of psychosocial therapies and gain consensus from stakeholders on the components, format and delivery of this evidence- based intervention and developed a manualised intervention. </p><p><br></p><p dir="ltr">The researchers assessed the feasibility of taking the intervention to full trial considering key aspects including recruitment, the willingness of participants to be randomised, retention in the trial, intervention fidelity and completeness of outcome assessment. They explored participants and healthcare workers views of receiving and delivering the intervention and wider implementation issues from key informants to ascertain factors affecting the reach and scalability of the intervention for a future trial. The key objective was to assess the feasibility of testing this intervention in a randomised, single-blind trial to determine the effectiveness of a culturally adapted version of FIp versus standard care in a primary care setting.</p>