Medication compliance in patients with chronic schizophrenia: implications for the community management of mentally disordered offenders.
The safe and effective management of mentally disordered offenders is a paramount concern in decisions for community placement. Treatment effectiveness is often vitiated by medication noncompliance. In the current study, clinical and sociodemographic correlates of treatment compliance were examined in outpatients with schizophrenia. Level of medication compliance, assessed independently by treatment staff at two outpatient settings, resulted in 40 compliant, 38 noncompliant, and 12 partially compliant patients. Key symptoms associated with medication noncompliance were anger, delusions, and hallucinations. As an initial investigation, a stepwise discriminant analysis was moderately successful at predicting medication noncompliance. The implications of these findings to mentally disordered offenders are explored.
Duncan
J C
JC
University of North Texas, Department of Psychology, Denton, TX, USA.
Rogers
R
R
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000786:Anger; D014150:Antipsychotic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003702:Delusions; D005260:Female; D005555:Forensic Psychiatry; D006212:Hallucinations; D006779:Hospitals, Public; D006787:Hospitals, Veterans; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010349:Patient Compliance / Q000523:psychology*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000188:drug therapy*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D016312:Treatment Refusal / Q000523:psychology
D014150:Antipsychotic Agents