Risperidone Hypothesis

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Schizophrenia has long become one of the most well-known mental disorder in the past and current society. Schizophrenia is one of the most important public health problems that human society confronts, affecting 1% of the world population (Andreasen, 2000). Schizophrenia patients that between adolescents age used to be unusual as most of the case schizophrenia only appeared in older age. Since researchers concern that schizophrenia patients are increasing dramatically, risperidone was used to ease the symptoms of schizophrenia. This paper will argue whether risperidone treatment is effective and safe to use in the perspective of adolescent with schizophrenia and answer the question how much risperidone adolescent patient should take to maximize …show more content…
(1996) suggest that using a qualitative research method in their experiment to pursue the hypothesis of risperidone efficient and safeness. They use a small sample group of 16 children and adolescent with the mean age of 14.9 years but with different type of schizophrenia, the most common diagnosis was Paranoid Schizophrenia which can be understand as patients repeatedly hearing voice and hallucinations inside their heads. The idea of this research is that giving a little amount of risperidone at first and then increase the amount each period of time starting from as little as 2 mg up to maximum of 10 mg. According to the statistical table, the results are rather surprising, they discovered that the ideal daily amount of risperidone schizophrenia should take is 5.93 ± 2.79 mg, most of the patients were noted to be much improved to very much improved in terms of behavior and mood compared to what they used to be. The negative symptoms which refers to the decrease of normal function such as anti-socializing, loss of motivation, lack of emotions and feelings, etc. and positive symptoms which related to delusions, movement disorders, hallucinations, etc. have significantly improved after the research. Grcevich also proposed that other than sedation, risperidone therapy is safe and …show more content…
(2003) proposed that the main reason behind the risperidone research was to examine and determine the effective, safeness and side-effects of the treatment. Zalsman research was in a short-term period of 6 weeks, the sample size of this research was rather small, only 11 patients from the age of 15.5 to 20 years old were involved into this research. The same process of giving a small amount of risperidone and then increased the amount to the desired amount has been done. Different from the first and second research, Zalsman’s research discovered that the ideal amount schizophrenia patients should take is 3.14mg per day but still impact major improvements to their behavior score. Zalsman’s research was also distinguish from the other two, not only he concluded risperidone is not effective on reducing negative symptoms but also a few side-effects were found during the research such as depression, weight gain and somnolence. In the end, Zalsman’s risperidone research conclusion was similar as other researches which risperidone was safe and fairly harmless to schizophrenia