Persistent Barriers to the Use of Long-Acting Injectable Antipsychotics for the Treatment of Schizophrenia

One of the major challenges in the treatment of schizophrenia is nonadherence, defined as the failure to take medications as prescribed. Nonadherence is a strong predictor of symptom relapse, hospital readmission, and poorer long-term outcome. Although long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAIs) have been found to be superior to their oral analogs at reducing relapse in large-scale meta-analyses, their prevalence seldom exceeds 30% even in populations with a history of nonadherence. We review multiple barriers to the use of LAI utilization and suggest strategies to address them.

We searched for the following terms: long-acting injectable/depot antipsychotics, schizophrenia, barriers, and attitude/perception in both the PubMed search index and Google scholar from 1995 to 2018. A total of 329 studies were selected, of which data from 13 were reviewed for this article. Only peer-reviewed studies, randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses that describe barriers to using LAIs were included.

Several barriers to using LAIs were identified. These are organized into 3 overarching categories: those related to the clinician; those related to the patient; and systems barriers. Clinician factors include the perception of LAIs as coercive, fears of not being able to control the dose, as well as current practice patterns and guidelines. Patient factors include perception of the injection as painful or intrusive, general lack of knowledge, and a sense of coerciveness. For each identified barrier, we propose potential solutions.

We identified multiple barriers to using LAIs in patients with schizophrenia. Specific strategies are suggested for overcoming each of these barriers.