Schizophrenia Daily News Blog

Updated Guidelines for Evidence-Based Treatment

Magellan Health Services (national managed behavioral health care organization) has adopted, updated, and simplified the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Patients with Schizophrenia. Specifically, they have expanded the guide with a summary of recent research conducted between 2002 and 2004, and added a "consumer summary" for patient and family education.

The result is what senior vice president Dr. Andrew Rudo believes to be "a definitive guide on evidence based treatments in schizophrenia."

The literature-review and treatment-guideline addendum released by Magellan, based on recent research in the area of schizophrenia, includes additional topics such as cultural factors, treatment adherance, suicide prevention, social skills training, and schizophrenia in the elderly. The organization uses this document in addition to the APA Guidelines as their promoted standard of care. The consumer summary is a very brief, two-page general outline including what schizophrenia is, what might cause it, what family members can do, and contact information for helpful organizations (such as NAMI).

The hope is that replacing previous, older treatment guideline documents with this expanded, updated APA-based Guide will improve the standards of care given by network practitioners for patients with schizophrenia.

Download a PDF of the APA Practice Guidelines for Schizophrenia (2nd edition, released in 2004).

Download a PDF of Magellan's updated, evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for schizophrenia.

Download a PDF of Magellan's consumer summary about schizophrenia and available treatments.

Original source articel: 'Magellan Health Services Updates and Enhances Guide for Evidence-Based Schizophrenia Treatment; Resource Helps Practitioners Stay Current on Effective Treatments' (Dec 9, 2004). Available at http://home.businesswire.com