Experiences of Self and Health in Schizophrenia Treatment

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Experiences of Self and Health in Schizophrenia Treatment

• IRAS ID

  180210

• Contact name

  Emilio Fernandez-Egea

• Contact email

  ef280@cam.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Australian National University

• Research summary

  This study aims to understand the factors associated with antipsychotic medication compliance and noncompliance, by interviewing a group of patients with severe forms of schizophrenia and asking of their perceptions of health, illness and medication effects. This study therefore looks to improve understanding about paths of recovery from and resistance to antipsychotic treatment.

  This research project investigates the lived experiences of people taking clozapine, the ‘gold standard’ antipsychotic drug for Treatment Refractory Schizophrenia (when patients have not responded to at least two trials of different antipsychotic medication). Alongside its capacity to alleviate psychotic symptoms, clozapine also causes a number of physical side effects. These side effects range from life­ threatening heart and blood count complications to ongoing effects such as seizures, drooling, drowsiness, tremors, fever and constipation (Fitzsimons 2005; Essali 2009). Lifestyle risk factors are compounded by clozapine consumption and often culminate in multiple chronic health conditions, requiring further medical and pharmacological management (Lambert 2010). In lived experiences of patients is not a mind disease with physical symptoms that can also come from treatment; it is rather a bundle of things experienced all at once (Warin 2000).

  This study will be a qualitative, longitudinal, multi-sited ethnography comparing clinical influences in Australia and the UK, to investigate how different levels of clinical attention to physical health might shape experiences.

  The UK component of this study will recruit a minimum of 10 English­speaking participants aged 18-55 years receiving or involved in clozapine treatment regimes over 18 months. Using qualitative methods of in­depth, semi-structured individual interviews, each participant will be interviewed at least once for up to 45 minutes at the Clozapine Clinic in Cambridge, Peterborough and Huntingdon, where the Chief Investigator is the Lead Clinician. Interviews will be analysed using a method of data analysis that is compatible with qualitative studies.

• REC name

  Wales REC 7

• REC reference

  15/WA/0151

• Date of REC Opinion

  8 May 2015

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion