SynthesisSchizophrenia bulletin2020
Are Randomized Controlled Trials on Pharmacotherapy and Psychotherapy for Positive Symptoms of Schizophrenia Comparable? A Systematic Review of Patient and Study Characteristics.
Synthesis in Schizophrenia bulletin, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- AVATAR versus cognitive-behavioral therapy for medication-resistant auditory hallucination: a systematic review and network meta-analysis.Psychological medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Cognitive behavioural therapy without medication for schizophrenia.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Acceptability of cognitive remediation for schizophrenia: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Psychological medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Psychological Interventions for Young People With Psychotic Disorders: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- An empirical study of offline and online group metacognitive training in patients with schizophrenia.BMC psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Augmentation Strategies for Partial or Non-responders to Clozapine in Patients with Schizophrenia: A Bayesian Network Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Clinical psychopharmacology and neuroscience : the official scientific journal of the Korean College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Review
- Eighth Kraepelin Symposium-Translation in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy: A Life-Long Necessity.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2021Article
- A Content Analysis of Self-Reported Financial Relationships in Biomedical Research.AJOB empirical bioethicsArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundWe examined patient and study characteristics of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy trials to establish whether the effects of these 2 treatment strategies can be compared meaningfully.
methodsWe inspected all randomized controlled trials included in 2 recent meta-analyses on antipsychotics and psychotherapy in patients with positive symptoms of schizophrenia, searching EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, and ClinicalTrials.gov. Differences between psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy trials were analyzed with Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney and chi-square tests.
resultsEighty studies with 18 271 participants on antipsychotic drugs and 53 studies with 4068 participants on psychotherapy were included. Psychotherapy studies included less severely ill patients (P < .0001), with a shorter duration of illness (P = .021), lasted for a longer period (P < .0001), administered the intervention as add-on to antipsychotics (P < .0001), had higher risk of bias in some domains including blinding of outcome assessment (P < .0001), and were funded publicly more frequently (P < .0001). Antipsychotic trials had larger sample sizes (P < .0001) and more study centers (P < .0001), included more males (P = .0001), inpatients (P < .0001), and slightly older patients (P = .031), more often used diagnostic operationalized criteria (P = .006), and were sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. They did not differ in conflict of interest (P = .24).
conclusionsWe found key differences between the 2 groups of studies that encompass higher risk of bias in psychotherapy studies and the inclusion of more severe patients in drug trials. These differences imply that study and patient characteristics should be carefully taken into account before considering a network meta-analysis. In the interest of patients, psychopharmacologists and psychotherapists should optimize their treatments rather than seeing them in competition.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.