Medical treatment has been considered to be the key regime for neuropsychiatric patients. However, the efficacy of medications developed for treating non-clinical symptoms such as social cognitive deficits associated with neuropsychiatric disorders are not clearly demonstrated.

On the other hand, non-medical training package capturing the key concepts of social cognition deficits has been developed. For example, the Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) developed by Prof. David Penn from the University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill has demonstrated impressive efficacy in treating non-clinical symptoms of neuropsychiatric disorders such as emotional and interpersonal distress. However, most of these findings were generated by western samples and we are still not clearly know these non-medical treatment regime can be applied to Chinese settings.

Most recently, Dr. Raymond Chan of the Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience (NACN) Lab, and key lab of mental healthy of the Institute of Psychology has launched a pilot study to test the efficacy of such type of training package. Dr. Chan and colleagues adapted the SCITand applied a prototype of the Chinese version to individuals with emotional and interpersonal problems over a period of 9 weeks.

Another group of individuals suffering from similar emotional and interpersonal distress were also recruited for as the comparison group. No SCIT training but only a general education of stress management was provided for the comparison group. All participants (SCIT training group and comparison group) were administered the scales for measuring social functioning and general mental status at baseline (pre-training), just after the completion of the training (post-training), and a subsequent 3-month follow-up after the post-training period.

The findings showed that the SCIT may have a treatment effect in individuals with emotional and interpersonal distress to improve their general mental health and social functioning performances. Moreover, there is a carry-over effect for the treatment effect for the SCIT training group, i.e., the training effect was persistent over the 3-month interval even after the completion of the training.

These findings are consistent with the western findings that both the full and condensed programmes of the SCIT were effective in improving the social cognition and theory of mind deficits in chronic and acute patients with schizophrenia. These findings, therefore, extend the clinical feasibility and utility of the SCIT to non-clinical individuals who demonstrate problems in everyday life social cognition.

However, it should be noted that the Chinese version is still in its prototype status and needs refinement, and the findings are very preliminary in nature. Further large scale study with a complete version of the SCIT over the non-clinical at-risk groups and also clinical groups should be conducted in the near future to cross-validate its training efficacy.

This work was supported by grants from the Project-Oriented Hundred Talents Programme (O7CX031003) and the Knowledge Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-YW-R-131).

This paper is now available in Psychiatry Research.

Chan, R. C. K.*, Gao, X., Li, X., Li, H., Cui, J., Deng, Y, Wang, Y. (2010). The Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT): An extension to individuals with schizotypal personality features. Psychiatry Research, doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2010.03.017