Un nouveau programme de Réhabilitation Sociale PRACS (Programme de Renforcement de l'Autonomie et des Capacités Sociales)

Schizophrenia is a widespread and severe disease in spite of an efficient pharmaco-therapy. The Programme for the Reinforcement of Autonomy and Social Skills (PRASS) we have devised is a new psycho-educational programme inspired from such techniques as psycho-education, cognitive remediation and cognitive behavioural therapy. The principle of the programme consists in increasing patients'awareness of the concrete problems of everyday life with a view to helping them to achieve personalized projects. Therefore, PRASS is composed of four units corresponding to daily situations : (1) dealing with money, (2) dealing with time, (3) developing communication skills and leisure and (4) introducing oneself. This programme is based on the principle of group sessions (learning social skills) and individual sessions (projects elaboration). The validation study of this programme has shown its efficiency, especially in that it brings more autonomy to the patients.