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The Causality of Depression in Schizophrenia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Joe Galdi
Affiliation:
Behavioral Neurology Program, New Hampshire Hospital, Concord, New Hampshire 03301, USA
Steven R. Hirsch
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, London W6

Extract

The phenomenon of post-treatment depression in schizophrenia has become the subject of considerable controversy regarding its causality (Ananth and Chadirian, 1980; McGlashan and Carpenter, 1976a). But as the recent commentary by Hirsch (1982) emphasizes, the most controversial issue is focused on whether this depression is neuroleptic-induced. Hirsch himself refutes neuroleptic-induction on the basis of various uncontrolled data which seem ostensibly incompatible with this causality. Results indicating that pretreatment depressions appear in a high proportion of recently hospitalized schizophrenics, occur in drug-free patients, and frequently remit or decrease following neuroleptic therapy are cited as evidence contradicting neuroleptic-induction. Hirsch therefore proposes an alternative view: that this post-treatment depression is an integral, “revealed” aspect of the schizophrenia syndrome which arises from the same pathophysiological process (cf. McGlashan and Carpenter, 1976b).

Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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