Joanna Moncrieff looks at the lack of long-term evidence for antipsychotic medication and considers what is needed to ensure we have the knowledge to maximize benefits and minimize harms.

Experts and clinical guidelines recommend using long-acting injectable (LAI) antipsychotics to prevent relapse among people diagnosed with schizophrenia who do not adhere to oral antipsychotic regimens. These recommendations belie a continued lack of strong evidence that LAIs have advantages over oral medications for this purpose. Ostensibly, the failure of LAIs to demonstrate the hypothesized ...

Tardive dystonia is a rare late-onset side effect of neuroleptics. This paper presents a prevalence study of 351 inpatients conducted in our hospital. Seven patients (2%) were found to suffer from this condition. The majority were found to be young and had received neuroleptics for a variable number of years before the onset of the dystonia. In general, treatment of this condition is disappoint...

Prolonged adherence to neuroleptic medication by patients with schizophrenia involves many complex issues. These vary markedly from case to case, and poor compliance is effectively resolved only when the attitudes and behaviors of individual cases are carefully analyzed. This article describes some of the aspects that commonly contribute to deficient compliance in clinical practice, and offers ...

Recent studies suggest that the multiple-family group is a preferable vehicle for assisting families and treating and rehabilitating persons with schizophrenia within a psychoeducational clinical framework. This approach is probably the most cost-effective treatment for schizophrenia developed since antipsychotic medication.