A double-blind study of adjunctive carbamazepine versus placebo on excited states of schizophrenic and schizoaffective disorders

Abstract

A multi-institutional double-blind study comparing the therapeutic effect of adjunctive carbamazepine and placebo with standard neuroleptic treatment was performed on 162 patients with DSM-III diagnosis of schizophrenic (n = 127) or schizoaffective disorders (n = 35) who had excited states or aggressive/violent behavior that responded unsatisfactorily to neuroleptic treatment. The patients participated in a 4-week trial of carbamazepine plus neuroleptics (n = 82) or placebo plus neuroleptics (n = 80). The sum of patients with marked and moderate improvement was modestly larger in the carbamazepine group (48 vs. 30%, P less than 0.05). There was no significant difference between the carbamazepine and placebo groups in the changes of total BPRS scores, although the carbamazepine group showed more improvement on the items suspiciousness, uncooperativeness and excitement. The results suggest that carbamazepine, when used in combination with neuroleptics, is a useful drug for the treatment of excited states of patients with schizophrenic and schizoaffective disorders.