Towards the improvement of compliance: the significance of psycho-education and new antipsychotic drugs.
Effective pharmacological, psychosocial and other kinds of treatment are now available for schizophrenia. Often, however, neither acute nor long-term treatment can be properly applied because of insufficient compliance by both patients and doctors. Patient non-compliance is as high as 50% under outpatient conditions; potential reasons may be either illness-related (e.g. lack of insight or idiosyncratic concepts of the illness or its treatment), drug-related (e.g. intolerable side-effects) or related to inadequate treatment management (e.g. insufficient information or lack of environmental support). Non-compliance by doctors is partly due to limited adherence to treatment guidelines. To improve both patient and doctor compliance, the use of educational tools for professional health-care providers, patients and families should be generally enforced. New antipsychotics with a better risk-benefit profile with respect to clinical efficacy and side effects will probably help to overcome drug-related non-compliance.
Gaebel
W
W
Department of Psychiatry, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
D014150:Antipsychotic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D006801:Humans; D010349:Patient Compliance / Q000523:psychology*; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000188:drug therapy*
D014150:Antipsychotic Agents