Physicians' and patients' involvement in relapse prevention with antipsychotics in schizophrenia

The purpose of this study was to assess the current status of relapse prevention in schizophrenia. Fifty hospital psychiatrists in Germany were interviewed about 100 currently treated inpatients. The patients were also interviewed about their knowledge of maintenance therapy. For 75 percent of their patients, physicians fulfilled guideline recommendations when indicating the planned duration of antipsychotic maintenance therapy. However, these recommendations were not routinely communicated to the patients, and target interventions, such as psychoeducation, to guarantee continuous antipsychotic therapy were seldom used. Accordingly, patients' knowledge of the optimal duration of maintenance therapy was poor.