Treatment of schizophrenia without neuroleptics: Psychosocial interventions versus neuroleptic treatment

It is commonly believed that reversal of schizophrenia is accomplished primarily through neuroleptic drug treatment, but this belief can only be maintained by ignoring a great deal of material published in the scientific literature. Randomized studies comparing psv-chosocial treatment programs without neuroleptics to drug-based programs were sought out for review, and six were found. Long-term outcomes were statistically equivalent or superior in the nondrug group in all six studies, even those where the quality of the psv-chosocial treatment was questionable. In studies with psychosocial interventions that appeared to have higher quality, both short; and long-term results were equivalent or superior without neuroleptics. These findings suggest that neuroleptics interfere with long-term recovery and, if appropriate psychosocial interventions are available, are not even necessary for short-term behavior control. This article follows an earlier review that also questioned the current use of neu-roleptics (Irwin, 2004). The earlier paper began with a brief history of treatmentsused in the 200 years prior to the introduction of the first neuroleptic, chlorpro-mazine, showing that the "treatments " used were actually cruel forms of torture and abuse. New "treatments " were routinely claimed as breakthroughs only to be discarded after a few years of use. A review of all studies of the long-term course of schizophreni