Aim: A research had been conducted upon the correlations between selected parameters of social networks of 64 patients ill with schizophrenia who were diagnosed according to DSM-III, and the aims of treatment such as: motivation to receive treatment, insight, compliance in taking medication, satisfaction with treatment, and treatment outcomes in the area of clinical and social functioning as well as family functioning seven years after the first admission.
Method: The indices of social networks were studied with Bizon's questionnaire. It serves storing of data on persons who have supportive functions as well as allows to work out characteristic properties of the support system such as: range of the network, size of the extra-familial network, level and localisation of the support, network and support system age.
Results: A compound system of social support and large social network, with a high level of support, correlate in a beneficial way with higher subjective satisfaction with treatment. Whereas a large extra-familial network with high level of support, correlates with better insight into illness. The larger the social network was (its range to be precise), including extra-familial network and the high level of incoming support, the fewer positive and negative symptoms the patients had and much more remissions appeared then. The larger network's range correlates with smaller number of relapses and global time of being hospitalised. People with a larger network, with high level of support located in family and outside the family, have been rarely hospitalised. The connection between network's parameters and number of daily hospitalisations had been rated.
Conclusion: People with a larger network, including extra-familial network, with high level of social support function better in the society didn't become regressive in their professional lives and they have smaller burden in their family life. The high level of social support correlates with better family function. In families of people ill with schizophrenia having larger extra-familial network with a high level of support there is less deterioration and disintegration, criticism and rejection.