Mapping specialized psychotherapy training for psychosis among mental health professionals in Switzerland: A social network analysis

Vollständiger Abstract

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Abstract Psychosis-specific psychotherapy is an evidence-based treatment approach that should be offered to patients during all phases of psychosis. However, to offer psychosis-specific psychotherapy, therapists need to engage in specialized training, which might not be part of their mandatory psychotherapy training. Hence, they may choose to attend the available individual psychosis-specific workshops, potentially resulting in a fragmented training landscape. Therefore, this study aimed to characterize the current training landscape in psychosis-specific psychotherapy. We conducted a large-scale survey among therapists (psychiatrists and clinical psychologists) in Switzerland. We retrospectively assessed self-reported attendance using a predefined list of psychosis-specific psychotherapy workshop types ( k = 15), along with demographic variables. To visualize the current training landscape, we used descriptive and social network analyses. Of the participating therapists ( n = 1382), 47% self-reported that they had attended at least one psychosis-specific psychotherapy workshop. The training landscape networks appeared fragmented (modularity scores ranging between 0.02 and 0.00). The three workshops with the highest self-reported attendance were cognitive behavioral therapy for psychosis (20%), psychotherapy for psychosis (17%), and psychosis-specific psychoeducation (16%). For combined attendance, no workshop combination exceeded a co-attendance rate of 10%. Furthermore, co-attendance patterns significantly differed across occupations and therapeutic orientations. This study identified gaps in the psychosis-specific psychotherapy training landscape, such as the diversity and fragmentation in training and low co-attendance rates. These findings offer a foundation for addressing potential gaps and providing evidence-informed measures to promote clearly defined, guideline-aligned specialization pathways.