Chemotherapeutic Choices of Native and Foreign Psychiatrists' Preferences for an Acute Psychotic Episode

To gain further understanding of psychiatrists' prescription preferences, samples of native and foreign psychiatrists specializing in chemotherapeutic treatment were presented with a standard case of a male experiencing an acute psychotic episode for whom they were asked to develop a treatment program. The current paper considers the degree of concordance in chemotherapeutic preferences. These data have shown little consensus. No “Tower of Babel” exists among these specialists regarding ratings of symptom severity or hierarchy of symptom importance. Upon moving to the next level of abstraction, the foreign psychiatrists considered schizo-affective and undifferentiated schizophrenia significantly more frequently than native psychiatrists. Neither a symptom hierarchy nor diagnostic approach accounted for the variance observed in these drug preferences.