Token Reinforcement Therapeutic Approach is More Effective than Exercise for Controlling Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenic Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Introduction: this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness ofexercise and token?behavior therapy on the negative symptoms ofschizophrenic patients.objective: comparison of the effectiveness of exercise andtoken?behavior therapy on the negative symptoms of schizophrenicpatients.methods: this research was a randomized controlled clinicaltrial that was done on 45 schizophrenic patients, hospitalized inrasht, iran. through systematic random allocation, the sampleswere placed in one control and two intervention groups, 15patients in each. to assess the negative symptoms, the scale for theassessment of negative symptoms (sans) was used. the effectof the interventions used (exercise and token?behavior therapy)was studied by completing the relevant checklists before and afterusing the interventions, and then, by comparing it with that of thestudied control group. in order to analyze the collected data, oneway anova and bonferroni’s test and spss software were used.results: analyses showed that the token reinforcement approachwas highly and significantly more effective than exercise forreducing the negative symptoms in schizophrenic patients (?36 ±7 vs. ?21 ± 8, respectively; p < 0.001). exercise was also shown tohave a highly significant advantage over no therapy, in controls, toimprove the negative symptoms in schizophrenic patients (?25 ±8 vs. 0.2 ± 1.08, respectively; p < 0.001).conclusion: both exercise and token?behavior therapies, alongwith drug treatment, are very effective in reducing the negativesymptoms of schizophrenia; but the impact of token therapyissignificantly higher.