[Complete neuroleptic withdrawal in patients with schizophrenia with intense symptoms and resistant to treatment]

Abstract

We report 2 studies evaluating the effects of a complete and progressive neuroleptic withdrawal on the symptomatology of 2 groups of 10 young chronically ill schizophrenic inpatients. In a preliminary open study, we compare the psychiatric symptomatology during a 4-week-period before the beginning of withdrawal and during a similar period following the end of withdrawal. We observe the significative improvement of the blunted affect, the deterioration of an aspecific psychiatric symptomatology (including irritability, excitement, hostility) and the non-modification of the specific schizophrenic symptomatology (in its 3 main components: positive signs, negative signs, disorganization). The second study (a double blind one) reports the effects of a complete neuroleptic withdrawal maintained during a longer period (8 weeks): 1. The improvement of the blunted affect is transiently observed during the 2 first weeks after the end of withdrawal but not after this time. 2. The deterioration of the aspecific psychiatric symptomatology by opposition to the non-significative modification of the specific schizophrenic symptomatology is a fact confirmed by this second study. Even if we can not exclude that the influence of neuroleptic withdrawal on the specific psychotic symptoms may require a longer time frame than 8 weeks to detect, this dichotomic evolution raises the problem of the specific action of neuroleptics in this particular category of patients.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)