Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is increasingly being recognized as a helpful approach for people with schizophrenia. Widely used to help people manage harmful habits, thoughts, and behaviors, CBT can be particularly useful in addressing schizophrenia symptoms that medication hasn't alleviated. For example, explains Anthony Lehman, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, CBT can be useful for a person who experiences paranoid thoughts that people are staring at them and talking about them when they get on a bus. "CBT can help them learn to cope with those kinds of ideas and essentially learn to do a reality test on those ideas so they don't interfere with their daily life," Lehman explains. Then they can ride the bus to work or school, and get on with their lives.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has a controversial history of use in patients with schizophrenia, and it is appropriate for only a tiny fraction of these individuals thanks to the availability and effectiveness of antipsychotic medications. An initial treatment can alleviate the symptoms of schizophrenia, but they will return, and ECT carries a number of unacceptable side effects, including memory loss and disorientation, making it unsuitable for use as a maintenance treatment, notes Columbia's Lieberman.

However, a newer technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in which an electric field is used to stimulate a localized region of the cortex more specifically than ECT can, is being investigated for schizophrenia, and has shown promise in alleviating negative symptoms such as depression and lack of motivation.