[Impact of the interview technique on the statement of effects and side-effects of antipsychotic agents].

Objective: To clarify to what extent subjectively-stated effects and side-effects differ between conventional and atypical neuroleptic agents and to what degree they depend on the method of questioning.

Methods: Effects and side effects of antipsychotic medication in 136 schizophrenia patients were studied through naturalistic observation over a period of 12 months (3 measurement time points) and information sought in 2 different ways: firstly, patients gave spontaneous information on the effects/side effects; they were then asked in detail on the basis of a checklist.

Results: Patients gave far less information spontaneously than when asked questions.

[Longer-term effects of inpatient vocational and ergotherapeutic measures on the vocational integration of patients with schizophrenia].

Objective: Unemployment rates are high in people with schizophrenia, so that considerable importance is attached to measures to improve their ability to work and their vocational integration.

Methods: In a study of the German Research Network on Schizophrenia the long-term effects of four-week vocational and ergotherapeutic measures on in-patients were investigated. The target criteria were the vocational integration, level of general functioning (Global Assessment of Functioning Scale) and psychopathology (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale).

[Compulsory psychiatric treatment and the patients' perspective].

Objective: Topic of this article is an investigation on the patients' perspective of involuntary treatment in psychiatry. The results of two studies are presented.

Methods: The first study surveyed 40 patients involuntarily admitted to the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University Hospital of Tübingen, Germany, according to the commitment law.

[Do the effects of inpatient vocational therapy and ergotherapy approaches differ in schizophrenic patients? Results of a controlled multicenter study of the german research network on schizophrenia].

For some decades, vocational therapy approaches have been an integral part of inpatient psychiatric treatment of patients with schizophrenia. Like most sociotherapeutic measures, they are largely hypothesis-based. So far, their effectiveness has been subjected to very little scientific scrutiny.