An Evaluation of the Double-Blind Trial as a Method of Assessing Promazine (“Sparine”) in the Treatment of Chronic Psychotic Patients

Abstract

Most people now accept the value of the tranquillizer or ataractic drugs, which play a major role in individual therapeutic results and in environmental change in major psychiatric hospitals. Numerous surveys have stressed the influence of these drugs and they have recently been confirmed by Brill and Patton (1959) in a twelve-year review of mental hospitals capable of dealing with over ninety-three thousand patients. As the number of patients on tranquillizing drugs (mainly chlorpromazine) increased, so the patients requiring restraint decreased, the discharges increased and the re-admissions decreased: a direct cause and effect relationship was established.