Thursday, 17 March 2011

Measures are important

As are concepts and language.

The measures used in studies of major tranquilisers are done using PANSS, BPRS and other standardised tools.

Within these measures there is one which is vital to patients: the effectiveness of reducing delusions and hallucinations. This is why patients take antipsychotics.

It is not the sole measure. To any patient is should be. To psychiatry the major tranquiliser offers other benefits.

Strangest of all, there's no review which conclusively explores this. As far as I am aware all that is required is to reanalyse the data from previous placebo controlled randomised control trials of antipsychotics. Let the sole measure used be the one which antipsychotics, in lay people's language, are meant to be. They're meant to reduce the delusions.

My guess is many of these medications aren't as effective as patients hope.

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We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"