Counselling may be best medicine

Anti-psychotic medicine should not be the first option offered to people at risk of developing schizophrenia, researchers said yesterday.

Clinicians should be “extremely careful” about prescribing antipsychotics to young people, because only a tenth will go on to develop more serious conditions, a study suggested.

A study by five universities, including Glasgow, suggested “benign” psychological treatments, including Cognitive Therapy (CT), were effective in reducing the severity of psychotic experiences.

The study, published today on the British Medical Journal website bmj.com, found the frequency and intensity of psychotic symptoms that may lead to more serious conditions were reduced by counselling and CT.

Professor Andrew Gumley, who led the research team at the University of Glasgow, said: “This study has very important implications for ensuring that young people who are at risk of developing psychosis are offered psychological therapy.

“Our findings that there is a much lower transition rate than previously found means that clinicians have to be extremely careful about prescribing antipsychotics, since only one in ten will actually develop psychosis.”