[Delayed-action neuroleptics and maintenance treatments]

Abstract

Neuroleptic therapeutic trial is a short time experience, usually lasting three months, or even less. A reference treatment (sometimes a placebo) or the studied neuroleptic are given respectively to two randomized samples from the same population. One variable is fixed, chemotherapy, and the other therapeutic variables--psychologic and socio-familial--are supposed to be constant during that short interval of time, though they are linked to the evaluation criteria. In a long term perspective, this robust methodology is questionnable. Psychosocial variables cannot be abstracted from the experience, and the treatment itself, volens nolens, is a composite variable in which biologic and psychologic variables interact. The singularity of the neuroleptic efficacy cannot be measured. Short term neuroleptic treatment answers a first question: how to cure a schizophrenia? Long term treatment, and incidentally long acting neuroleptics, respond to a second question: how to cure and prevent schizophrenia in one particular schizophrenic patient? Some empirical guidelines are given.