Subjective Experience of Antipsy-chotic Treatment

Overview

The poor compliance with antipsychotic treatment is most frequently conditioned by the undesi-rable effects of the drugs used. The side-effects are not restricted only to motor manifestationsbut affect also cognitive abilities and emotiveness. Frequently these manifestations are not suffi-ciently striking to be recorded by objective examination. Naber (8) published the initial experien-ce with a self-rating scale of subjective experience of wellbeing during treatment with neurolepticdrugs - the so-called SWN (self-rating wellbeing neuroleptic scale).Method: A reduced 20-item version of SWN was presented to 39 ambulatory patients with thediagnosis of schizophrenia (17 men and 22 women aged 23 - 54 years) in satisfactory remission(with a total PANSS score below 60). 22 of them were treated with neuroleptic depot neuroleptics,17 with clozapine. The authors compared the values of the total SWN score and the values ofpartial scores in the positively and negatively formulated items in the two groups of patients.Results: The authors did not reveal any significant differences in total or partial SWN scorebetween patients treated with depot neuroleptics retard and those treated with clozapine.Discussion and conclusions: The therapeutic results in schizophrenia depend on the early onset ofadequate psychopharmacotherapy and successful prevention of relapses. A feasible way how toincrease the effectiveness of long-term antipsychotic treatment is to use tools for measuring thesubjective effect of neuroleptics by means of self-rating scales, early elimination of undesirableside-effects and introduction of suitable psychoeducational programmes for patients and theirrelatives.

Key words:
subjective effects of neuroleptics, neuroleptic retard, clozapine, quality of life, compli-