Treatment Discontinuation during the first year in a cohort of patients with schizophrenia

Antipsychotics are the standard treatment of choice for Schizophrenia. Treatment compliance is a major issue in the management of Schizophrenia. Poor compliance leads to worsening of prognosis of the illness and thus there is a need for improving compliance in these patients. Aim of the study is to study the treatment compliance patterns in one year in a cohort of Schizophrenia patients in a routine out patient care. Methodology is by Data mining from records of patients who had come for the first time and been diagnosed with Schizophrenia between 2010 and 2011. The outcome measures are antipsychotic medication discontinuation rates and switch rates between the medications in the one year of treatment. 66 patients met our inclusion criteria. The oral antipsychotic medication discontinuation rate in one year of our cohort was found to be 65.2 percentages and the mean time to discontinuation of the medications in the sample was 7.45 months and the switch rate was 28.8 percentages.Conclusion of the study was that the discontinuation rate in our study is an intermediate between that reported in CATIE and the CUtLASS studies in the west. There is a need to develop appropriate interventions for improving treatment compliance in patients with Schizophrenia.