[Pharmacogenic depressive syndromes in the course of schizophrenic psychoses (author's transl)]

Fluphenazine decanoate treatment causes significantly more depressive syndromes than does placebo. These depressions are primarily pharmacogenic. Depending on the intensity of symptoms patients are handicapped up to suicidal risk. Prophylactical treatment with neuroleptics, which is of great help in many cases, needs careful handling of individual dosage. In case depressive symptoms appear, first and best therapy is to reduce or even discontinue the application of the neuroleptic, later antiparkinsonian drugs should be added (or increased). Only when this regimen is unsuccessful or too slow, thymoleptics should be given carefully and temporarily. -- A schematized long-term neuroleptic treatment often causes needless inconvenience to the patients. Psychiatrists should use the spectrum of psychopharmacological drugs carefully, not only to bring a vita minima without relapse to the formerly schizophrenic patient but to help him live a life worth living after psychosis.