One challenge with treating schizophrenia is whether or not those diagnosed with it will adhere to their medication treatment plans. The current issue of Psychiatric Times features an article about ways of measuring adherence, attitudes of clinicians toward nonadherence, and ways that new formulations of antipsychotic drugs might reduce the probability of nonadherence.

And a new study by researchers at Tokyo Women’s Medical University may help clinicians measure who will be more likely to have problems with complying. Researchers used a Japanese version of the Rating of Medication Influences (ROMI-J) Scale with 90 outpatients who had good compliance for 3 months when they were intially interviewed. They were followed up for two years.

The most frequent reason for compliance at the initial interview was “fear of relapse” and the most frequent reason for noncompliance, not surprisingly, since antipsychotic drugs can have some pretty miserable side effects, was “distressed by side effects.”

In the follow-ups, fifteen of those who hadn’t maintained compliance had higher baseline scores for “no perceived daily benefit,” and sixty-four outpatients who had maintained compliance had higher baseline scores for “fulfillment of life goals.”

The researchers concluded that understanding attitudes of patients toward drug treatments may help predict levels of compliance.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 2 Mar 2006
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.