Intervals between long acting neuroleptics: outcome and re-admission variables.

A drug monitoring programme has evaluated flexibility in the use of treatment intervals with Depot Fluphenazine. In this large group of schizophrenics over 30% receive injections at intervals of over 3 weeks or longer, with an overall relapse rate of 24%. Analysis of the intervals reveals in those who relapse, that 20% of cases increased their interval by an average of 7 weeks. Generally, there was an increase in intervals by the patients in the second year of treatment.

Some nonverbal aspects of depression and schizophrenia occurring during the interview.

Using remote control videotape recording of interviews and subsequent analysis of the record, eight measures of nonverbal behavior (principally facial) have been made in 12 schizophrenic and 13 depressive subjects shortly after admission to the hospital and again prior to discharge. They were matched with controls who were interviewed in a similar way. Additional videotape observations were made prior to the interview, when the patient was alone and subsequently when he was shown pictures designed to evoke emotional responses. It appears that some nonverbal behaviors can be used in the interview to differentiate between psychiatric patients and normals. These may also be useful as an index of clinical change since they revert toward the normal with clinical improvement. The nonverbal behaviors studied were more prominent in the interpersonal setting than when alone or when the subject was looking at pictorial stimuli. This implies that they may be elicited in response to another individual, either as a distortion of the ordinary nonverbal signaling system, or as physiological responses to a changed state of arousal induced by the interpersonal setting rather than as static characteristics of the syndrome.

Verbal conditioning of affect responses of process and reactive schizophrenics in a clinical interview situation.

Sixteen process and 16 reactive schizoprenics out-patients were compared on a verbal conditioning task in an alternating conditioning-extinction design, using verbal and non-verbal positive social reinforcement to influence the emission of self-referred affect statements. It was found that process subjects failed to condition during the time periods used, while reactives demonstrated a significant trials effect showing trends consistent with those hypothesized from the type of design used. This differential conditionability between groups was shown not to be a function of diagnosis, sex, motivation, severity of illness, medication, hospitalization history, or general speech output. It was concluded that the degree of social responsiveness manifested in the premorbid history of the two groups is also operative in behaviour during the psychotic period, specifically, in responsiveness to positive social reinforcers in a verbal conditioning task.