Best practice pharmacologic treatment of schizophrenia: Applying principles of evidence-based medicine

Despite substantial advances, schizophrenia remains an extremely challenging illness to treat. Clinicians are often placed in situations in which they have to make treatment decisions when they believe that there is little information to guide them. Despite gaps, there is in fact a large body of useful information about the treatments that we utilize. Accessing this information and applying it to specific treatment decisions about individual patients is often difficult. In this article, approaches to the application of principles of evidence-based medicine to the pharmacologic treatment of schizophrenia are outlined, with a view to helping practitioners sort through the existing body of information and make the best possible decisions for their patients’ greatest gain. Hopefully this will encourage clinicians and treatment systems to consider how best to employ evidence-based information to provide patients suffering from schizophrenia with the best currently available pharmacologic treatment.