A certain number of schizophrenia patients who go off
antipsychotic medications and relapse are quickly brought to
the attention of psychiatrists and other mental health workers
when they return for treatment and/or rehospitalization; these
relapsing patients are the ones from whom opinions by some
about the absolute necessity of continual antipsychotic medications for all patients with schizophrenia are formed. The
possible biases involved in limiting one’s study to only this
type of sample is discussed by Cohen and Cohen (1984).
The current results are similar in principle to earlier
results reported from an important, landmark, report by Fenton and McGlashan (1987), but also involve continuous
multifollow-up study of these patients and assessment with
personality scales and other instruments. Unlike the Fenton
and McGlashan study, it also involves prognostic and personality comparisons of patients on antipsychotics versus the
combination of all schizophrenia patients not on medications,
regardless of whether the latter patients had favorable or
unfavorable outcomes.