Subjective experience of treatment, side‐effects, mental state and quality of life in chronic schizophrenic out‐patients treated with depot neuroleptics

Abstract

Attitude towards treatment, side-effects, mental state and quality of life was assessed in 53 chronic schizophrenic out-patients on maintenance treatment with depot neuroleptics. It was found that 60% of the patients viewed depot medication positively, while only 8% viewed it negatively. Only 70% of patients complained about side-effects, even though 94% had scored as having them. Hypokinesia and hyperkinesis were the side-effects least noticed by the patients, but most noticed by the treating physician, while the opposite was the case with psychic side-effects. Only 49% of patients thought they had a psychotic illness, and there was no correlation between the patients' own evaluation of the severity of their illness and their score on the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS) or the treating physician's evaluation. Quality of life did not correlate with either side-effect score or PANSS score. The schizophrenic patients' assessment of their condition was therefore in general different both from that of the treating physician and from that determined using rating scales.

Flupenthixol versus Risperidone: Subjective Quality of Life as an Important Factor for Compliance in Chronic Schizophrenic Patients

“…According to Fitzgerald et al [3] and Naber et al [4], subjectively rated quality of life and externally rated psychopathology were found to be independent or only moderately correlated with each other. Most studies did not find any significant relationships to positive symptoms but moderate to negative symptoms; the strongest correlations were found with symptoms of depression [5,[65][66][67].…”

Depot antipsychotic use in schizophrenia: an East Asian perspective

“…The subjective feelings, attitudes and perceptions of the patients towards the use of depot antipsychotic also need to be evaluated and taken into consideration (Larsen and Gerlach, 1996). There may be experiences of pain (Bloch et al, 2001), feelings of being coerced and controlled (Gerlach, 1995), a sense of disempowerment ( Marland and Sharkey, 1999), as well as the fact that the patient may find it unacceptable and stigmatizing (Castle et al, 2002;Patel et al, 2003).…”

Subjective Quality of Life: Its Relationship with Clinician-Rated and Patient-Rated Psychopathology

“…When the assessment is performed by using patients’ self-rated instruments, subjective quality of life has been found to be consistently associated with psychopathology: in fact, several studies have shown that patients’ satisfaction with life is strongly associated with overall levels of self-reported symptom severity [22, 23]and, among the various psychopathological dimensions, most notably with self-rated depressive symptoms [18, 24, 25, 26]. Overall, these findings seem to support the view that subjective quality of life in psychiatric patients is more closely linked to the subjective appraisal of levels of distress rather than to levels of psychopathology as assessed by clinicians.…”