European Long-acting Antipsychotics in Schizophrenia Trial

It remains unclear if depot medication can reduce relapse rates and improve clinical outcome when offered to all patients in need of continuation treatment with antipsychotics. Before we can conclude whether or not all schizophrenia patients could benefit from a switch to depot formulations, several questions remain to be answered. Is depot medication associated with better continuation rates and outcome? How are depot medications tolerated as compared to oral medication? In order to clarify these important issues we aim to perform a large multi-center trial in which schizophrenia patients in need of continuous treatment who are randomized 1:1:1:1 to two different depot preparations or to two different oral medications. In this pragmatic, randomized, open label, multicenter, multinational comparative trial, schizophrenic patients aged 18 years or older, having experienced the first psychosis between 6 months and 7 years ago,with an indication (patient or physician initiated) to receive medication or to switch to another antipsychotic drug, will enter the study. The study duration will be one month for the medication switch and then a follow-up of 18 months. Patients having refused to take part in the study will be asked to give consent and participate in a naturalistic follow-up, during which they will be followed with the Clinical Global Impression list (CGI) as closely related to the study schedule as possible, unless they also refuse this.