Long-Acting Injectable Risperidone in the Treatment of Schizophrenia

In the proposed study 450 veterans with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia who had at least one psychiatric hospitalization for schizophrenia in the previous 2 years would be randomly assigned at 16 VA medical centers to long-acting injectable risperidone or doctor's choice of oral antipsychotic medication (i.e., excluding other long-acting injectable medications, but not specifying any particular oral agents or dosages). Recruitment would take 27 months to complete, and the study would continue for a third year to allow 9 months of follow-up for the last patient recruited. All patients would be treated from the time of entry up to the end of the three-year study period. Follow-up assessments would continue quarterly. Treatments would not be blinded since giving placebo injections to the comparison group would interfere with the goal of comparing the acceptability of two different methods of medication administration. However, end points will be blindly rated.