European Long-acting Antipsychotics in Schizophrenia Trial
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2020-08-26
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric illness with periods of remission and relapse.
Patients vary in the frequency and severity of relapse, time until relapse and time in
remission. Discontinuation of antipsychotic medication is by far the most important reason
for relapse. A possible method to optimize medication adherence is to treat patients with
long-term, depot medication rather than oral medication. However, despite its apparent
"common sense" this approach has neither been universally accepted by practicing
psychiatrists nor unequivocally demonstrated in clinical trials. Therefore, in this study we
aim to investigate possible advantages of depot medication over oral antipsychotics in an
independently designed and conducted, randomized, pragmatic trial.