The study suggests that the CAN is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing the needs of people with severe mental illness. It is easily learnt by staff from a range of professional backgrounds, and a complete assessment took, on average, around 25 minutes.

patients with renal impairment. This meta-analysis cannot answer these questions, but we need to remember we never had all the answers when we were using multiple daily doses.It is proving difficult to change entrenched prescribing behaviours. I believe we do not need further studies of efficacy and safety. Nor need we wait for evidence that allocating resources to implement a once daily dosing policy is worth while. What we need is a commitment to change now. Abstract Objective-To determine whether compliance therapy, a cognitive-behavioural intervention, could improve compliance with treatment and hence social adjustment in acutely psychotic inpatients, and ifso, whether the effect persisted six months later.Design-Randomised controlled trial of compliance therapy and non-specific counselling, each comprising 4-6 sessions lasting 10-60 minutes.

The results support the effectiveness of compliance therapy in improving functioning and community tenure after an acute psychotic episode.

No abstract

Patients in the cognitive therapy group had significantly fewer days in bipolar episodes after the effect of medication compliance was controlled. However, the results showed that cognitive therapy had no significant effect in relapse reduction over the last 18 months of the study period. Further studies should explore the effect of booster sessions or maintenance therapy.