Recovery From Schizophrenia: Psychiatry And Political Economy

ANTIPSYCHOTIC DRUGS: USE, ABUSE AND NON-USE 225(b) also distinguish between good-prognosis and poor-prognosis patients.Such studies are few.Rosen and associatesPsychopharmacology researchers Bernard Rosen and David Engelhardt and theirco-workers at a New York clinic followed a group of over 400 outpatients withschizophrenia for between four and eight years. They divided the group intogood- and poor-prognosis categories on the basis of their own “HospitalProneness Scale” which measured the patients’ prior social attainment, the extentof their previous treatment and their performance in psychological tests. Thepatients were randomly assigned at the very outset of the study to treatment witheither a placebo or one of two standard antipsychotic drugs, chlorpromazine orpromazine. The subsequent hospital admission rate indicated that theantipsychotic neuroleptic drugs were effective in keeping the patients with poorprognosisschizophrenia out of hospital:For good-prognosis patients, however, drug treatment appeared to be unhelpful oreven harmful. 17Subsequently these researchers followed up the 129 patients who had beenhospitalized to see which of them were hospitalized for a second time. The resultswere even more striking. Drug treatment proved effective in keeping poorprognosispatients out of hospital longer:But good-prognosis patients treated with chlorpromazine were hospitalizedsignificantly sooner. 18University of California GroupIn a study at Camarillo State Hospital, California, psychologist Michael Goldsteinand his associates divided a group of 54 newly hospitalized, male patients with