Dear Erika,

I am sorry for not being able to write or speak Spanish but this issue is important. I have been married to one beautiful schizophrenic women and another  with manic depression. I was aware of both at the time and was confident I had done my research, spoke with the psychiatrists, and their long term doctors. Even with all of my background knowledge I was unable to help them stay on there medications. 

The one issue that must be researched and a solution found is the issue your question addresses and that being adherence to their daily medications. The most prevalent problem facing people on isotropic medications is that once medicated they feel perfectly fine and no longer take the medications. The relapse rates on most if not all isotropic drugs is staggeringly high some as much as 90% some studies have shown.

I still love both, but in the end they both left for the streets and mental institutions. I send my thoughts and hopes your research will be beneficial to both.

Gods speed,

Douglas

Hello, adherence indeed is a major issue in these 2 specific conditions and apparent non-response to treatment can be explained by non-adherence in a high percentage of patients not improving. I have doubts, whether any self-rating questionnaire is suitable to measure adherence. From a practical point of view, only observed drug intake or monitoring of drug plasma levels (if available) are an option.

Best regards, Juts

Medication adherence is measured directly by evaluating initial fill and refills of the prescription medication. There is a commonly-used measure for this called medication-possession-ratio (MPR). I use it fairly regularly in my evaluation work.

I just came across this article that looks like a good one!

I hope this helps

Ariel

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23553512

I think there is a measure...its acronym is SCAPI. It was used in the Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD Children.  If you do a search on the treatment outcomes of that randomized clinical trial, and its followup studies, you should read about it in the Method section. 

Thank you very much for your info. In my research it is difficult to have measures such as monitoring of drug plasma levels, so I 'll have to find measures of self-report or observation that demonstrate that the patient in euthimic phase takes the medication as recommended his psychiatrist and the patient follows the psychological treatment recommendations.