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The effect of baseline antipsychotic status on the 12‐month outcome in initially stabilized patients with schizophrenia
Author(s) -
Fountoulakis Konstantinos N.,
Panagiotidis Panagiotis,
Nimatoudis Ioannis
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
human psychopharmacology: clinical and experimental
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.461
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1099-1077
pISSN - 0885-6222
DOI - 10.1002/hup.2712
Subject(s) - schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , extrapyramidal symptoms , antipsychotic , brief psychiatric rating scale , positive and negative syndrome scale , anxiety , rating scale , psychiatry , depression (economics) , medicine , clozapine , psychology , psychosis , developmental psychology , economics , macroeconomics
Recently, the usefulness of antipsychotics has been challenged. The aim of the study was to measure the real‐life effect of antipsychotic treatment on remission and recovery rates in already stabilized patients with schizophrenia after 1 year. Material and Methods The study included 133 stabilized patients with schizophrenia (77 males and 56 females; aged 33.55 ± 11.22 years). The assessment included testing at baseline and after 1 year with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, Calgary Depression Scale, State–Trait Anxiety Inventory, UKU, Extrapyramidal Symptom Rating Scale, and General Assessment of Functioning. Results More patients were on antipsychotics after 1 year (increase by 16.45%). There was an increase in the remission by 75% and in the recovery rate by 66%. It was not possible to predict the outcome on the basis of baseline variables. Discussion There is an accumulating beneficial effect of antipsychotic treatment over a 12‐month period; early lack of remission is not prognostic of a poor outcome. There might be different neurobiological mechanisms underlying acute and sustained response. Both remission and recovery are difficult to achieve for patients with schizophrenia and characterize only a minority of patients. Only a very small minority of patients (4.5%) that is impossible to identify a priori would do well without off antipsychotics.