"Long acting injectable (depot) antipsychotics and changing treatment philosophy"


The field of schizophrenia drug treatment is fraught with debate, controversies and confusion. Depot or long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAIAs) strategy in relapse prevention is not an exemption (see Kane et al. 2013). Antipsychotics are the mainstay of the successful long term treatment of patients with
schizophrenia. There are four main reasons to initiate antipsychotic drug treatment:

  1. to treat the presenting psychotic symptoms; 2. to prevent relapse;
  2. to delay or prevent the florid onset of schizophrenia or psychotic disorder, and 4. to intervene as soon as schizophrenia or psychosis develops, in order to improve the overall
    outcome. Bringing the prodromal or acute phase of schizophrenia into remission as soon as possible and preventing the relapse is crucial to obtain personal recovery and maintain well-being for patients and their families. The advent of a significant number of effective
    and well tolerated antipsychotic drugs has increased our possibilities to treat schizophrenia and other delusional disorders in more successful ways with much better
    treatment outcome including full recovery. However, in clinical practice there is a huge gap between possi-bilities for achieving high treatment effectiveness and poor results in reality. One of the major reasons is the non-adherence to drug treatment which continues to be a significant problem and high costly issue, with all three generations of antipsychotic medications. LAIAs were developed in order to improve treatment adherence
    and possibly prevent relapse in patients with schizo-phrenia

http://www.hdbp.org/psychiatria_danubina/pdf/dnb_vol26_no4/dnb_vol26_no4_304.pdf

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Maybe they should start trying to help the ones who cant afford treatment. My dad can’t afford to send my mom to a care home, and is clueless about what to do about her illness. He says repeatedly that the government won’t help him, that in the US there’s no assistance for people like him with these struggles. That’s because he makes enough money that it’s all up to him what to do, and so a disabled mentally ill person falls through the cracks. I’m surprised my mom hasn’t died already. It’s not like our insurance covers it, or I’d assume. All the money is going down the drain because my mom throws away our belongings, including valuable ones and cooking stuff, pictures, instruments, refuses to feed the cat. My mom screamed at me when I tried to give our cat cheese because she was starving it. I found the cat food, but still. It’s going to leave everyone destitute, because she can’t manage money and my dad can’t cut her off or be her caretaker all the time he has to work just to afford the mortgage and she’s going through my drawers and emptying out my room to make space for her delusions.