Prediction of Improvement in Schizophrenia Under Four Phenothiazines

THERE are now quite a number of psychotropic agents (reserpine, the phenothiazines, and the butyrophenones) which have been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of schizophrenic patients. In the course of using these drugs, observations have been made to the effect that certain kinds of schizophrenic patients are more responsive to certain of the drugs, while other schizophrenic patients are more responsive to other drugs. For instance, the patient who is agitated, hostile, and aggressive presumably responds best to chlorpromazine, while the more apathetic and withdrawn patient in need of energizing is said to respond better to one of the piperazine derivatives, such as fluphenazine or trifluoperazine. However, most controlled research until the recent past has been unable to verify these observations; nor has anyone demonstrated that different phenothiazines result in any different clinical effects of any kind, even though clear differences in side