Schizophrenia was diagnosed a year ago, patient is under treatment of Oleanz (01 tab./ day ), condition is progressive with lot of improvement. Although we are regular in medicine, but we have heard that any gap of even one day in medication may cause a "relapse" is that true? We are under stress after hearing this, kindly guide.

treatment adherence is very important in psychiatric disorders.i understand that family members feel very burdened and stressed due to these conditions but don't worry about it.just ensure compliance to.medications. 

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Dr. Sathya PrakashPsychiatrist13yrs exp

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Hi, Thanks for writing in. Welcome to the forum. This is a commonly asked question and a very valid concern. Medicines for schizophrenia, to be effective, need to be taken daily. Frequent missing of doses will lead to a sub-optimal outcome. After adequate control, if the medicines are stopped for sometime, generally the symptoms do not emerge immediately and generally there is a lag period of few weeks to several months. But if symptoms are inadequately controlled, symptoms can re-emerge much earlier on stoppage of medicines, sometimes even in a few days. Coming to your specific question: Although advised to not miss even a single dose, it is only human that many patients occasionally miss a dose. However, if the treatment is mostly regular, and symptoms are mostly controlled, an occasional missing of dose should be of no consequence, and is a common scenario in clinical practice. So don't worry too much about it, try not to miss a dose, but if you do miss, it is ok, don't get too worried, be careful the next time. Take care! 

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