The effect of early or late initiation of long-acting antipsychotics on the caregiver burden in schizophrenia

Abstract

The effective treatment in the early stages of schizophrenia is of critical importance to improve the prognosis. Schizophrenia affects patients’ relatives too. The effects of early or late initiation of long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAI-APs) on the patient have been shown, yet their effects on the caregiver are still unknown. We aimed to determine how the time of initiation of LAI-APs affects the caregiver burden by comparing the patients who were started on LAI-APs in the first 5 years of diagnosis and those who were started at a later period. Patients were classified as ‘early-LAI’ and ‘late-LAI’ according to the time of initiation of a LAI-AP. Their caregivers were also classified as the same way, as ‘caregiver-early’ and ‘caregiver-late’ and were compared in terms of caregiver burden. The quality of life, depression, anxiety, and caregiver burden scores of the caregiver-late group were significantly worse. The time of initiation of LAI-APs and the functioning levels of the patients were found to be determinant factors for the caregiver burden. This is the first study to investigate the effects of LAI-AP’s initiation time on the caregivers to our knowledge. The use of LAI-APs in the early stages is associated with better outcomes for the caregiver.