THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS FOR A MULTICENTER STUDY ON THE LONG-TERM PROPHYLACTIC TREATMENT OF AFFECTIVE-DISORDERS

The paper reports on the process of patient recruitment for a controll ed clinical multicenter study on the treatment of affective disorders. Two thirds of the patients screened did not participate because proph ylactic treatment was either unnecessary or not justified for medical reasons. Further, a number of patients equal to that eventually alloca ted to the trial refused to participate for personal, idiosyncratic re asons. In spite of this, the patients in the trial were very similar t o those not participating with respect to relevant variables such as a ge, sex, number of and intervals between previous episodes or severity of the present episode.