Training the recognition of emotions based on bibliotherapy techniques.

The deficit of mentalisation skills is a well-known phenomenon in schizophrenia. In our study, patients with schizophrenia underwent an 8-session training. The procedure was based on bibliotherapy, and we associated each basic emotion identified by Ekman with a short story that gave a striking description of that emotion. After we read the stories together, the participants were given a collection of face portrait photos and they were asked to pick the one that illustrated the emotional state of the characters. They were also asked to recall a personal memory when they felt the same way. We used the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' (RMET) test to assess the efficiency of our method. The one-sample t-test we performed to compare the pre- and post-training values detected a significant difference (p=0.000608<0.05). The control group of patients with schizophrenia who did not undergo the training presented no significant difference between the two RMET tests performed 2 weeks apart (p=0.467). However, the two-sample t-test performed on the individual changes in RMET results in the study and control groups did detect a significant difference (p=0.000786<0.005). Our results suggest that the mentalisation deficit of people suffering from schizophrenia can be decreased, therefore their communicative and adaptive skills can be developed or at least the deterioration of these skills can be slowed down.