Drug maintenance treatment compliance and its correlation with the clinical picture and course of schizophrenia

The relationship between patients compliance with their drug therapy regime and important predictors of schizophrenia was studied on the basis of a 7-year observation (from the onset of illness) of 185 schizophrenic patients. Compliant patients (N= 57) were compared with noncompliant patients (N=37). The two groups were matched for age at onset, sex, social background and presence of precipitating factors. The compliant patients had better occupational and family adjustment, less intense behaviour disorders prior to the onset of schizophrenia, a shorter term of untreated first psychosis. These patients also had shorter periods of untreated relapses and longer remissions. They had more often insight of their disease whereas serious signs of defect were less frequent. They had later onset of disturbances of self-activity, vitality and identity. The results of this study suggest that with compliance with a neuroleptics drug treatment regime does not affect the number of admissions in the hospital but is related to longer remissions and less intense signs of deficiency.