Christoph Correll, MD: Clinical Practice Guidelines for Schizophrenia

An overview of clinical guidelines show AP monotherapy is the treatment of choice for patients with a first schizophrenia episode.

In a poster presented at the American Psychiatric Association Virtual Meeting, a research team led by Christoph Correll, MD, professor of Psychiatry at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, conducted a literature review of current schizophrenia guidelines.

The researchers found all available guidelines stated that a different single antipsychotic should be tried if the first is ineffective or intolerable, but there was less consensus on maintenance therapy, likely based on insufficient longer-term data and conflicting results in current meta-analyses.

The recommendations on duration of antipsychotic therapy after a first schizophrenia episode varied across the different clinical practice guidelines.

In an interview with HCPLive®, Correll explained how the COVID-19 pandemic might influence schizophrenia care and how difficult it is to craft guidelines for a disease with a wide range of symptoms, with treatments that could have a wide range of side effects.

Correll also said the process for updating clinical practice guidelines should change, allowing for a quicker revision process when new studies are conducted, or new treatments are developed.