For decades, psychologists have devised many treatment regimes for schizophrenia patients, with varying degrees of success and effectiveness. There have been great obstacles in their efforts, mainly due to the fact that patients of schizophrenia lack insight into their impaired conditions. Often patients refuse treatment of any kind because they do not perceive any mental illness associated with their behavior. In particular, individuals suffering from paranoid schizophrenia regard therapy as intrusions from hostile outside forces, which reduces compliance on the part of the patient (Gray, Wykes & Gournay, 2002). Other problem with treatment programs for schizophrenic patient is that they suffer from both positive and negative symptoms, each requiring different type of treatments. In order to combat the difficulty of treating schizophrenia, several techniques have been devised; psychoanalytic therapy, behavioral therapy, family therapy and most predominantly, drug therapies (medication).
Medication is widely used form of treatment of schizophrenia because there are more benefits with it than any other form of treatment. Also, drug therapy is the primary form of treatment implemented at the onset of schizophrenia. Antipsychotic medications have been proven effective such that they reduced depression among the patients as well as the number of relapses (Collings, Gaskill, Lawrence, Lunney, Meehan & Morrison, 2000). There are a number of drugs that are available for the treatment of schizophrenia. Most of these drugs block the action of dopamine in the brain (Thomas, 1993) and can help a great deal in lessening positive symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, and in helping to maintain coherent thoughts (Usher, 2001). However, they usually have serious side effects that contribute to people taking their medication (Thomas, 1993; Gray, Wykes & Gournay, 2002), but the use of newer drugs to treat schizophrenia has produced fewer side effects in most...