The Effects of Recreation Therapy on the Habit of Smoking and Positive–Negative Symptoms Among Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric condition that has detrimental outcomes on an individual’s thinking, understanding and feelings. However, it not only affects one’s actions and emotions, but also, and quite specifically, creates an avenue for such antisocial behavior as seclusion. Hence, it is important to highlight the necessary requirements for the recovery of schizophrenic patients and subsequently delve deeper into the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia itself, especially among patients who have been confined to psychiatric care for too long. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of recreation therapy on smoking as well as the positive-negative symptoms of schizophrenia among patients who have reached the chronic stage of this condition. Essentially, this was a semi-experimental study with one pretest and one posttest. 50 patients under psychiatric care, aged between 30 to 50 years, were selected and then equally divided into the control and experimental groups. The instruments for this research were the Anderson questionnaire and the smoking cigarette questionnaire, the latter being created by the researcher. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. To evaluate the hypothesis of research, this study relied on a covariance analysis. Based on the results, it can be said that there were significant (p ≤ 0.05) differences between the control and experimental groups related to smoking as well as the positive-negative symptoms of schizophrenia. It shows that 4 months of recreation therapy was able to decrease the prevalence of smoking (19.9%), in addition to the positive symptoms (18.3%) and negative symptoms (14.7%) of schizophrenia within the experimental group. It is hoped that the results of this study will encourage the use of recreation therapy as a practical and non-pharmacological form of treatment for patients with chronic schizophrenia.