The Effect of Forewarning on the Occurrence of Side-Effects and Discontinuance of Medication in Patients on Dothiepin

Dothiepin was prescribed for 100 depressed out-patients alternately allocated to one of two groups. Patients in Group A were forewarned about side-effects and patients in Group B were not forewarned. None of the patients had previously received dothiepin. After two weeks the patients were questioned regarding side-effects and continuance with medication. Eighty-nine patients were included in the final analysis. The results failed to confirm the hypotheses that forewarning patients of side-effects causes a greater number of patients to complain of such effects, or that where patients experience side-effects, forewarning is associated with any less frequent discontinuance of therapy. Compared with a previous study with amitriptyline, the results of this study are much closer to statistical significance. This may be due to the lower overall incidence of side-effects with dothiepin and calls for further work with a larger sample of patients.