Schizophrenia treatment guidelines - an international perspective

Abstract

One of the recent initiatives inaugurated by the EPA European Platform of Psychiatrists aims at improving quality of mental health care in Europe by providing and implementing evidence-based information and advice and thereby minimizing mental health care gaps. To provide such guidance for schizophrenia, an overview will be given of existing treatment guidelines. This overview will focus firstly on methodological quality, since according to survey from 2005 the methodological quality of most guidelines was at best moderate (Gaebel et al. 2005). Secondly, the focus will be on treatment recommendations regarding core clinical questions like early recognition and intervention, acute and long-term treatment. Accordingly, respective recommendations from well established international guidelines will be presented. In addition, participants hopefully from all over Europe are encouraged to engage in the discussion and to provide information from their national/regional treatment guidelines, especially if not available in English language.