DELIVERABILITY OF PSYCHOEDUCATIONAL FAMILY MANAGEMENT

As part of an open clinical trial currently underway at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, the feasibility of behavioral fami ly management (Falloon et al. 1984) for schizophrenia in combination w ith two different neuroleptic medication strategies was investigated. The treatment approaches were psychoeducational family management with a standard dose or with targeted medication. In this article the foll owing questions were addressed: (1) What proportion of the total schiz ophrenia population admitted as inpatients might be eligible for psych oeducational family treatment (assessment based on n = 411 over a 33-m onth period)? (2) How representative of this population are the patien ts who were randomized to the experimental groups? (3) How many patien ts dropped out of treatment after entering the trial? The results show that about 60 percent (247) of the patients were eligible for a psych o-educational treatment approach. Of these, 34 percent (85) participat ed in the trial and were randomized to the treatments. Only 4 percent of the relatives but 20 percent of the patients refused to take part i n the study. The 85 trial patients did not differ from the total eligi ble on the numerous socioeconomic and symptom variables assessed. The treatment dropout rate was 11 percent. Those patients who accepted tre atment did not differ from those patients who dropped out on socioecon omic or illness variables. The results indicate that early identificat ion of dropouts is not possible at least with the methods used in this study.