Management of Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia: An update

This is an important issue - hope this helps some people:

Typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs, showed modest efficacy in managing Negative Symptoms.

Conflicting results were obtained with the use of glycinergic neuromodulators (e.g; Sarcosine), anticholinergics, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, psychostimulants, modafinil and 5-HT3 receptor antagonists.

Moreover, non-pharmacological therapies including psychological therapies have failed to address Negative Symptoms effectively.

At present, it appears that the best effective approach for clinical management of NSS is achieved by complementing drug therapy with psychosocial therapies.

Summary:

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This fits what I have witnessed numerous times, and it certainly fits my own experience. The pt and doc have to keep plugging away until they find the precise combination of medicinal and behavioral interventions that get the job done. Took me from '94 to '04. Went through five p-docs and six therapists in the process.

Things moved a lot faster once I got just well enough to start educating myself and began to assume a bigger role in selecting and then using the therapies, btw. It’s far easier now to get some degree of education online than it was back then, but one has to wade through a lot of BS with a solid grounding in psychodynamics, behaviorism, cognitivism and (actually) Buddhism – as well as biological chemistry and pharmacology – to be able to sort the chicken s##t out from the chicken salad.

The process of doing that, however, was (for me, anyway) very empowering.

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It makes me happy that negative symptoms are finally being addressed with the same seriousness as positive ones.

I hate the negative wax build up… for me… it has always felt far more crippling then positive ones.

It’s hard to even take care of myself when they get too deep.

This is good news.

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The place where my son used to go now requires that a patient have some form of therapy with their meds.
Now-if I could just get him to take his injections so he could get therapy!

Agreed. I won’t discredit my positive symptoms in past times but man the negative ones are seriously disabling