Treatment compliance of outpatients with schizophrenia: patient's attitudes, demographic, clinical and therapeutic variables.

AIM: To compare patient's attitudes, demographic, clinical characteristics, psychopathology, insight and type of antipsychotic therapy in compliant and non-compliant outpatients with schizophrenia; to explore correlations between patient's attitudes and related variables.

METHODS: A sample of 44 outpatients of both genders (> 60 years), with a diagnosis of ICD-10 Schizophrenia (F20) was included into the study. All the patients were on maintenance treatment with different classes of antipsychotics (oral, depot or both), for at least 6 months from the latest hospitalisation. The exclusion criteria were determined. The BPRS and the PANSS were used to assess psychopathology and insight (G12 item). The self-report questionnaire MARS was used to assess patient's attitudes.

RESULTS: Compliant patients (N=37) showed the following significant differences compared to non-compliant patients (N=7): higher the MARS (p<0.001), lower the PANSS (Positive sub score) (p<0.01) G12 scores (p<0.01) (the Student t test) and percentage of patients with previous non-compliance (p<0.05) (chi2 test). Considerable correlation between the MARS and the BPRS (p<0.001), the PANSS (Positive, General psychopathology) (p<0.001; p<0.01), G12 scores (p<0.05) (negative) and current compliance (p<0.001) was also found (The Spearman's correlation).

CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that special attention should be paid to attitudes, severity of psychopathology, insight and history of non-compliance in compliance evaluation of outpatients with schizophrenia.