The Effect of Anticipatory Pleasure Skills Training Program on Anhedonia of Schizophrenia Patients with Negative Symptoms

Abstract

This quasi–experimental pretest-posttest with control group research design examined the effect of anticipatory pleasure skills training program on anhedonia of schizophrenia patient with negative symptoms. The subjects were 40 patients aged between 20 to 59 years diagnosed with schizophrenia and had negative symptoms. They were attending an out-patients clinic of a tertiary level hospital. The experimental group received the anticipatory pleasure skills training program whereas the control group received the routine nursing care. Research instrument consisted of the anticipatory pleasure skills training program, the negative syndrome scale, the anhedonia scale and the temporal experience pleasure scale. All research instruments were validated for content validity by professional experts. The temporal experience pleasure scale, the negative syndrome scale and the anhedonia scale had the reliability as of .91, .84 and .70, respectively. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, dependent t-test and independent t-test.
The findings were as follows:
1.The mean score of anhedonia of schizophrenic patients with negative symptoms after receiving the anticipatory pleasure skills training program was significantly lower than that before at the .05 level of significance.
2.The mean score of anhedonia of schizophrenic patients with negative symptoms in the group receiving the anticipatory pleasure skills training program was significantly lower than that of the group receiving the routine nursing care at the .05 level of significance.
The results suggest that the nursing care of positive emotion and the anticipatory pleasure skills training is effective in reducing anhedonia of schizophrenia patients.