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Life Events and Schizophrenic Relapse after Withdrawal of Medication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Joseph Ventura ,
Keith H. Nuechterlein ,
Jean Pederson Hardesty  and
Michael Gitlin
Joseph Ventura*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles, USA
Keith H. Nuechterlein
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles, USA
Jean Pederson Hardesty
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles, USA
Michael Gitlin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles, USA
*
∗UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, 300 Medical Plaza, Suite 2200, Los Angeles, CA90024-6968, USA
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Abstract

Research with schizophrenic out-patients has shown that antipsychotic medication reduces relapse rates. This protective factor may operate partially by raising the threshold for relapse in the face of environmental stressors such as life events and high levels of familial expressed emotion. A prospective, longitudinal design was employed in the monthly collection of life-events data with 23 recent-onset schizophrenic out-patients. In a between-subjects ANOVA, a significantly higher frequency of independent life events was found in the month prior to a relapse for ten patients on medication, as compared with the analogous month for 13 drug-free patients. These findings suggest that neuroleptic medication may produce a prophylactic effect by raising a patient's threshold of vulnerability to relapse.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 161 , Issue 5 , November 1992 , pp. 615 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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