Advantages and disadvantages of combination treatment with antipsychotics ECNP Consensus Meeting, March 2008, Nice

Terminology and principles of combining antipsychotics with a second medication. The term "combination" includes virtually all the ways in which one medication may be added to another. The other commonly used terms are "augmentation" which implies an additive effect from adding a second medicine to that obtained from prescribing a first, an "add on" which implies adding on to existing, possibly effective treatment which, for one reason or another, cannot or should not be stopped. The issues that arise in all potential indications are: a) how long it is reasonable to wait to prove insufficiency of response to monotherapy; b) by what criteria that response should be defined; c) how optimal is the dose of the first monotherapy and, therefore, how confident can one be that its tack of effect is due to a truly inadequate response?status: publishe