The use of card sort exercises in the prevention of relapse in serious mental illness

The identification of early warning signs and the development of a relapse prevention plan is an important part of the treatment of serious mental illness, be it Schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorder. The use of a card sort exercise is an effective way of developing an accurate description of the early warning signs. This paper reviews the literature on the subject, and describes our method of applying this technique to our patients. It also describes a pilot study in which we found that the use of early warning signs in an early intervention service does enable some relapses to be treated at home before they become so serious as to lead to hospital admission. We look forward to further studies on large groups of patients.