Adjunctive imipramine maintenance in post-psychotic depression/negative symptoms

Abstract

Fourteen schizophrenic or schizoaffective patients, who had had operationalized syndromes of post psychotic depression or negative symptoms unresponsive to adjunctive benztropine but responsive to adjunctive imipramine, completed a double-blind maintenance treatment trial of adjunctive imipramine vs. placebo. All patients were maintained on standing doses of fluphenazine decanoate and benztropine throughout. All six patients tapered to placebo relapsed into their depression-like, negative symptom state, whereas only 2 of 8 patients maintained on imipramine had such a course (p = .009, favoring imipramine maintenance). No patients maintained on imipramine relapsed into psychosis. These results suggest the advisability of maintaining adjunctive imipramine treatment, in conjunction with appropriate neuroleptic and antiparkinsonian regimens, in stable, syndromally defined, postpsychotic depressed or negative symptom patients initially responsive to adjunctive imipramine.