Early intervention services, patterns of prescription and rates of discontinuation of antipsychotic treatment in first‐episode psychosis

Aims Non‐compliance is still an important problem in psychotic patients. Although antipsychotic (AP) treatment leads to a decrease in psychotic relapses, there are no clear recommendations about how long treatment should be maintained after first‐episode psychosis (FEP) and no indication of the rates and causes of treatment withdrawal in this group. Methods We evaluated a large sample of patients with FEP for 2 years to compare the time to all‐cause treatment discontinuation of AP drugs and the time to the first relapse. We collected the sociodemographic and psychopathological characteristics of the sample. The number of relapses was also recorded. Results A total of 310 FEP patients were assessed across seven early intervention teams (mean age = 30.2 years; SD = 11.2). The most prevalent diagnosis at baseline was psychotic disorder not otherwise specified (36.1%), and the most commonly used APs were risperidone (26.5%) and olanzapine (18.7%). A lack of efficacy was the most frequent reason for the withdrawal of the first AP prescribed, followed by non‐compliance. There were no differences in the relapse rates between different APs. Patients treated with long‐acting injectable (LAI) APs presented less disengagement from services than patients treated with oral APs. Conclusions Although there were no differences between the different APs in terms of relapse rates, LAIs had higher retention rates than oral APs in early intervention services. Compliance is still an important issue in Psychiatry, so clinicians should use different strategies to encourage it, such as the use of LAI treatments.