45 CLINICAL EFFECT OF NARRATIVE NURSING COMBINED WITH RISPERIDONE ON SENILE SCHIZOPHRENIA
Authors: Wen Lifen , Tong Xiaoli , Yang Hong , Zhao* Mingxu 
Published: February 2025

Abstract

Background
Schizophrenia, a serious mental disorder, is increasing in prevalence in the elderly population every year. Although risperidone has shown some efficacy in the treatment of schizophrenia, single-pharmacological treatment has limited effect in improving patients’ emotional and cognitive symptoms. Narrative care, as a psychological intervention, promotes patients’ emotional expression and cognitive adjustment by listening to their life experiences and emotional distress. The study aims to investigate the comprehensive treatment effect of narrative nursing combined with risperidone on elderly patients with schizophrenia.

Methods
The subjects of the study were 80 elderly patients with schizophrenia who were hospitalized in a mental health center between January 2023 and January 2024, all of whom met the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia in the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Edition (ICD-10). The study used a randomized grouping method to divide the patients into an experimental group and a control group of 40 each. The control group received conventional risperidone treatment, and the experimental group received an 8-week narrative nursing intervention based on conventional medication. The nursing care included helping patients to sort out important life experiences, explore emotional distress, and improve cognitive styles, as well as combining emotional support and psychological guidance to encourage patients to express their inner experiences. Before and after the intervention, cognitive function was assessed by Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), psychotic symptoms were assessed using Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), and social functioning scale (SFS) was used. Functioning Scale (SFS) to measure social adjustment.

Results
At the end of the intervention, the MMSE scores of the patients in the experimental group significantly improved from 18.2±4.1 before treatment to 24.5±3.7, and the MMSE scores of the control group were 22.1±3.4 after treatment, and the difference between the two groups was statistically significant (P&lt;0.05).The results of the BPRS scores showed that the experimental group’s symptomatic improvement was significantly better than that of the control group (P&lt;0.05), which indicating that the narrative nursing intervention effectively alleviated the patients’ clinical symptoms. In terms of social function, the SFS scores of the experimental group improved significantly, and the difference was also statistically significant compared with the control group (P&lt;0.05). The results show that the treatment model of narrative nursing combined with risperidone has significant advantages in improving cognitive function, emotional symptoms and social adaptability of elderly schizophrenic patients.

Discussion
Narrative care promotes functional recovery at the cognitive level by encouraging patients to recall and express their personal experiences. Experimental data from the study suggest that narrative care not only effectively compensates for the limitations of single-pharmacological treatment, but also enhances patients’ social functioning and quality of life. The successful application of this intervention model highlights the importance of integrated treatment in the management of geriatric schizophrenia. However, the observation period of the study was short, and future studies need to further extend the follow-up period to explore the long-term effects of narrative care and its applicability to other subgroups of patients.