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.

Objective The primary aim was to compare the impact of NAVIGATE, a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, team-based treatment approach for first episode psychosis designed for implementation in the U.S. healthcare system, to Community Care on quality of life. Methods Thirty-four clinics in 21 states were randomly assigned to NAVIGATE or Community Care. Diagnosis, duration of untreated psychosis and clinical outcomes were assessed via live, two-way video by remote, centralized raters masked to study design and treatment. Participants (mean age 23) with schizophrenia and related disorders and ≤6 months antipsychotic treatment (N=404) were enrolled and followed for ≥2 years. The primary outcome was the Total Score of the Heinrichs-Carpenter Quality of Life Scale, a measure that includes sense of purpose, motivation, emotional and social interactions, role functioning and engagement in regular activities. Results 223 NAVIGATE recipients remained in treatment longer, experienced greater improvement in quality of life, psychopathology and involvement in work/school compared to 181 Community Care participants. The median duration of untreated psychosis=74 weeks. NAVIGATE participants with duration of untreated psychosis <74 weeks had greater improvement in quality of life and psychopathology compared with those with longer duration of untreated psychosis and those in Community Care. Rates of hospitalization were relatively low compared to other first episode psychosis clinical trials and did not differ between groups. Conclusions Comprehensive care for first episode psychosis can be implemented in U.S. community clinics. and improves functional and clinical outcomes. Effects are more pronounced for those with shorter duration of untreated psychosis.

In early-phase psychosis, EIS are superior to TAU across all meta-analyzable outcomes. These results support the need for funding and use of EIS in patients with early-phase psychosis.

Relatively low doses of antipsychotic drugs lead to significant symptom amelioration in the majority of first-episode psychosis patients. In the long term, risperidone prevents relapse in more patients and for a longer time and also induces less abnormal movements than haloperidol.

Schizophrenia is frequently a chronic and disabling disorder, characterized by heterogeneous positive and negative symptom constellations. The objective of this review was to provide information that may be useful for clinicians treating patients with negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Negative symptoms are a core component of schizophrenia that account for a large part of the long-term disability and poor functional outcomes in patients with the disorder. The term negative symptoms describes a lessening or absence of normal behaviors and functions related to motivation and interest, or verbal/emotional expression. The negative symptom domain consists of five key constructs: blunted affect, alogia (reduction in quantity of words spoken), avolition (reduced goal-directed activity due to decreased motivation), asociality, and anhedonia (reduced experience of pleasure). Negative symptoms are common in schizophrenia; up to 60% of patients may have prominent clinically relevant negative symptoms that require treatment. Negative symptoms can occur at any point in the course of illness, although they are reported as the most common first symptom of schizophrenia. Negative symptoms can be primary symptoms, which are intrinsic to the underlying pathophysiology of schizophrenia, or secondary symptoms that are related to psychiatric or medical comorbidities, adverse effects of treatment, or environmental factors. While secondary negative symptoms can improve as a consequence of treatment to improve symptoms in other domains (ie, positive symptoms, depressive symptoms or extrapyramidal symptoms), primary negative symptoms generally do not respond well to currently available antipsychotic treatment with dopamine D 2 antagonists or partial D 2 agonists. Since some patients may lack insight about the presence of negative symptoms, these are generally not the reason that patients seek clinical care, and clinicians should be especially vigilant for their presence. Negative symptoms clearly constitute an unmet medical need in schizophrenia, and new and effective treatments are urgently needed.

IMPORTANCEThe fact that individuals with schizophrenia have high cardiovascular morbidity and mortality is well established. However, risk status and moderators or mediators in the earliest stages of illness are less clear.OBJECTIVE To assess cardiometabolic risk in first-episode schizophrenia spectrum disorders (FES) and its relationship to illness duration, antipsychotic treatment duration and type, sex, and race/ethnicity. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Baseline results of the Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) study, collected between July 22, 2010, and July 5, 2012, from 34 community mental health facilities without major research, teaching, or clinical FES programs. Patients were aged 15 to 40 years, had research-confirmed diagnoses of FES, and had less than 6 months of lifetime antipsychotic treatment. EXPOSURE Prebaseline antipsychotic treatment was based on the community clinician's and/or patient's decision. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Body composition and fasting lipid, glucose, and insulin parameters. RESULTS In 394 of 404 patients with cardiometabolic data (mean [SD] age, 23.6 [5.0] years; mean [SD] lifetime antipsychotic treatment, 47.3 [46.1] days), 48.3% were obese or overweight, 50.8% smoked, 56.5% had dyslipidemia, 39.9% had prehypertension, 10.0% had hypertension, and 13.2% had metabolic syndrome. Prediabetes (glucose based, 4.0%; hemoglobin A 1c based, 15.4%) and diabetes (glucose based, 3.0%; hemoglobin A 1c based, 2.9%) were less frequent. Total psychiatric illness duration correlated significantly with higher body mass index, fat mass, fat percentage, and waist circumference (all P < .01) but not elevated metabolic parameters (except triglycerides to HDL-C ratio [P = .04]). Conversely, antipsychotic treatment duration correlated significantly with higher non-HDL-C, triglycerides, and triglycerides to HDL-C ratio and lower HDL-C and systolic blood pressure (all P Յ .01). Olanzapine was significantly associated with higher triglycerides, insulin, and insulin resistance, whereas quetiapine fumarate was associated with significantly higher triglycerides to HDL-C ratio (all P Յ .02). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCEIn patients with FES, cardiometabolic risk factors and abnormalities are present early in the illness and likely related to the underlying illness, unhealthy lifestyle, and antipsychotic medications, which interact with each other. Prevention of and early interventions for psychiatric illness and treatment with lower-risk agents, routine antipsychotic adverse effect monitoring, and smoking cessation interventions are needed from the earliest illness phases.

The study results suggest that neither glycine nor D-cycloserine is a generally effective therapeutic option for treating negative symptoms or cognitive impairments.

The cognitive improvements observed in the trial were consistent in magnitude with practice effects observed in healthy controls, suggesting that some of the improvements in cognition in the first-episode schizophrenia group may have been due to practice effects (ie, exposure, familiarity, and/or procedural learning). Our results also indicated that differential medication effects on cognition were small. We believe that these findings have important implications for drug discovery and the design of registration trials that attempt to demonstrate cognitive enhancement.