Experiences of Self and Health in Schizophrenia Treatment
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Experiences of Self and Health in Schizophrenia Treatment
IRAS ID
168737
Contact name
Emilio Fernandez-Egea
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Australian National University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 8 months, 30 days
Research summary
This research project investigates the lived experiences of people taking clozapine, the gold standard antipsychotic drug. Clozapine is used in cases of medically defined Treatment Refractory Schizophrenia (TRS) when a person has not responded to at least two trials of different antipsychotic medication, and can be thus definitively diagnosed as having schizophrenia (20-40% of schizophrenia patients meet this criterion). 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, commonly including Type 2 diabetes, requiring further medical and pharmacological management (Lambert 2010). Certainly, clozapine treatment impacts the physical body as much as it may impact the brain. However, research into the relationships between physical and mental health in this context has seldom considered how treatment regimes impact the embodied experiences of schizophrenia. 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 research will explore how people with schizophrenia perceive what happens to them during clozapine treatment. It will gather information on how the physical effects of the antipsychotic drug are experienced, as, according to previous anthropological research (e.g. Warin 2000; Lucas 2004; Jenkins 2010), the physical experiences of schizophrenia are of great significance to patients themselves. This research furthers anthropological enquiry into what it means to have, and to be treated for, schizophrenia by attending to experiences in the context of broader health risks and multi-morbidity.
REC name
East of England - Cambridge East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/EE/0112
Date of REC Opinion
20 Mar 2015
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion