Psychiatria Danubina, Vol. 25 No. 3, 2013.
Conference paper
IMPORTANCE OF THE NEWER GENERATIONS OF ANTIPSYCHOTICS IN REDUCING SCHIZOPHRENIA HOSPITALIZATION RATES
Vlado Jukić
orcid.org/0000-0003-1337-9200
; University Psychiatric Hospital Vrapče, Zagreb, Croatia
Aleksandar Savić
; University Psychiatric Hospital Vrapče, Zagreb, Croatia
Miroslav Herceg
; University Psychiatric Hospital Vrapče, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Throughout history, given the lack of understanding of schizophrenia and lack of effective treatment options, patients were often
committed to asylums and later psychiatric institutions, often for prolonged periods of time. First antipsychotic medications helped to
bring about changes in approach to these patients and facilitated deinstitutionalization, and discovery of new drugs with differing
side-effects profiles introduced new options in treating schizophrenia patients. Data on hospitalization of patients in University
Psychiatric Hospital Vrapče from the mid-1990s, as well as data on national level, suggests a trend of drop in hospitalization of
schizophrenia patients. At the same time, that period saw significant increase in a number of available newer-generations
antipsychotics and the rise in their use compared to first-generation one. Although far from being the only contributing factor, seem
to play an important role in continuing the trend of reducing hospitalization rates for schizophrenia patients that started with first
antipsychotics. Newer antipsychotics with a more tolerable side-effects profile promote better compliance and further reduce rate of
relapse and hospitalizations. No less important is the contribution of newer antipsychotics with new receptor profiles to the
personalized psychopharmacotherapy approach that is in tune with emerging conceptualizations of schizophrenia as a complex
syndrome with a number of separate symptom domains, whose specific combinations produce specific individual clinical
presentation and in turn ask for a specific individual approach to the patient.
Keywords
antipsychotics – schizophrenia - hospitalization
Hrčak ID:
161217
URI
Publication date:
17.9.2013.
Visits: 820 *