The conference participants recommended that mental health care providers perform physical health monitoring that typically occurs in primary care settings for their patients who do not receive physical health monitoring in those settings. This change in usual practice is recommended on the basis of the conference participants' belief that this additional monitoring will result in the earlier detection of common, serious risk factors that could, without detection and intervention, contribute to impaired health of patients with schizophrenia.

Integrated treatment can be successfully delivered either by assertive community treatment or by standard clinical case management.

Objective This randomized trial addressed risks and benefits of staying on antipsychotic polypharmacy versus switching to monotherapy. Method Adult outpatients with schizophrenia taking two antipsychotics (127 participants across 19 sites) were randomly assigned to Stay on Polypharmacy or Switch to Monotherapy by discontinuing one antipsychotic. The trial lasted for 6 months, with a 6-month naturalistic follow-up. Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analyses examined time to discontinuation of assigned antipsychotic treatment, and random regression models examined additional outcomes through time. Results Individuals assigned to Switch to Monotherapy had shorter times to all-cause treatment discontinuation than those assigned to Stay (p <.05). By month 6, 86% (n=48) of those assigned to Stay on Polypharmacy were still taking both medications whereas 69% (n=40) of those assigned to Switch to Monotherapy were still taking that monotherapy. Most monotherapy discontinuations entailed returning to the original polypharmacy. Groups did not differ with respect to psychiatric symptomatology or hospitalizations. The monotherapy group lost weight whereas the polypharmacy group gained weight. Conclusions Discontinuing one of two antipsychotics was followed by treatment discontinuation more often and more quickly than when both antipsychotics were continued. However, two thirds of participants successfully switched, groups did not differ with respect to symptom control, and switching to monotherapy resulted in weight loss. This supports the reasonableness of prescribing guidelines encouraging trials of antipsychotic monotherapy for individuals receiving antipsychotic polypharmacy, with the caveat that individuals should be free to return to polypharmacy if an adequate trial on antipsychotic monotherapy proves unsatisfactory.

Many college students engage in high levels of unsafe sexual behavior that puts them at risk for HIV infection. To better understand the dynamics underlying college students' unsafe behavior, focus group discussions were conducted with 308 students (146 men and 162 women). The results showed that, instead of consistently using condoms, many college students use implicit personality theories to judge the riskiness of potential sexual partners. Specifically, partners whom college students know and like are not perceived to be risky, even if what students know about these individuals is irrelevant to HIV status. The students determine the riskiness of partners they do not know well based on superficial characteristics that are also generally unrelated to HIV status. Therefore, AIDS prevention interventions for college students must expose the ineffectiveness of the students' use of implicit personality theories to determine potential partners' riskiness, and the “know your partner” safer sex guideline should be abandoned.

We characterized prescribing in Connecticut's State public mental health system to assess the feasibility of implementing an evidence-based medication algorithm. Medication records for a random sample of outpatients with diagnoses of schizophrenia spectrum disorders showed prescribing patterns similar to the entire United States. The base rate of changing antipsychotic medications was moderate. Over half of patients received decanoate medications, polypharmacy was nontrivial, and there was variability in prescribing patterns across physicians. Caucasian patients were more likely to receive an atypical antipsychotic and less likely to have a decanoate medication, and Latino patients were less likely to change medications. Because the base rate of changing medications was moderate and a considerable proportion of patients were prescribed newer antipsychotic medications, introducing a research-derived medication algorithm with newer atypical antipsychotics as first line agents may fit well with current practice. Further, implementing such an algorithm may reduce racial and ethnic disparities in prescribing patterns.