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According to the New York Times, a major new study found that lower doses of antipsychotics are better for the treatment of schizophrenia:
“The findings, from by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States, concluded that schizophrenia patients who received smaller doses of antipsychotic medication and a bigger emphasis on one-on-one talk therapy and family support made greater strides in recovery over the first two years of treatment than patients who got the usual drug-focused care.”
The paper, by John M. Kane and colleagues and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (AJP), is called Comprehensive Versus Usual Community Care for First-Episode Psychosis and it presents the results of the NIMH “RAISE” study.
It’s an impressive paper. However, it’s not a paper about dose reduction. So the NYT‘s coverage was misleading.
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The word “dose” (including variants such as “dosage”) appears just once in the Kane et al. paper, and that’s in reference to other studies, not the current one.
The intervention was in fact a complex mix of family and individual support and therapy, supported activities and employment, and a computerized medication management system called COMPASS.
Kane et al. report no information on dosage so we don’t know if the intervention group were actually taking lower doses than the controls.
Read full, original post: Medication for Schizophrenia: Less is More?
