Services for schizophrenics: a lifelong approach to treatment.

Mental health services in the 1960s reflected then-current beliefs in the effectiveness of crisis-oriented services and broad social programming to treat and even prevent serious mental disorders. The result was an unwarranted emphasis on the single-episode user of services and lack of interest in patients such as schizophrenics who needed repeated services. Numerous more recent studies indicate that many cases of schizophrenia have a heritable biological component and respond well to neuroleptic medication. For effective out patient treatment of schizophrenics who might otherwise be repeated users of hospital service, the author advocates a program of continuous, or nearly continuous, neuroleptic medication, combined with counseling and social and crisis services. The patient would be educated to take a role in self-regulation of medication, within a prescribed range, which would appear to improve safety, precision, and reliability.