Background
psychiatric, mental disorder, mental disorders, Schizophrenia, schizophrenia
ADVERSE EFFECTS, DISEASE, DISORDERS
Schizophrenia is a major severe mental disorder that has profound adverse effects on individuals and poses huge disease burden to families [International consensus shows that community-based rehabilitation (CBR) service, as a broader supportive approach, is an effective way to improve functioning and negative symptoms and address the treatment gap for schizophrenia [Community-based mental rehabilitation has received high-level attention from Chinese national policy makers recently. China’s first Mental Health Law, which was enacted in 2012 and enforced in 2013, requested to provide mental rehabilitation services to psychiatric patients. The Strategic Plan for Healthy China 2030 issued in 2016 clearly stated the mission of “equal access to rehabilitation services for all disabled persons”. Suggestions on Accelerating the Development of Community-based Rehabilitation Services among People with Mental Disorders issued in 2017, provided specific steps to implement and scale up community-based rehabilitations: 80% of counties (districts) can provide mental rehabilitation services and 60% of patients with mental disorders can receive these services in 2025.However, there is a lack of high-quality study on how to effectively implement community-based rehabilitation interventions for schizophrenia, and to conduct the health economic evaluations for the interventions in China, which weakens evidence base for policymaking. Therefore, rigorous trials are needed in China to demonstrate effective and scalable interventions to significantly improve outcomes for people with schizophrenia and to create evidence of the economic benefits of these interventions, for use in advocacy with the government to establish national programs. This paper presents the protocol for community-based rehabilitation interventions on quality of care for people with schizophrenia in China (CRISC) project, which is a cluster randomized trial that evaluating the effectiveness of CBR intervention.