[Drug abuse experience and neuroleptic prescriptions at the onset of schizophrenia].

In the first stage of schizophrenia, patients without acute symptoms often react to the prescription of neuroleptics by reservations or a refusal. In ten young schizophrenics who were hospitalized in order to initiate therapy with neuroleptics, subjective deterioration was often coincident with objective improvement of symptoms. The use of hashish as a self-administered medication at the onset of the symptoms and the ingestion of neuroleptics were experienced by the patients in a similar fashion. The decision to prescribe neuroleptics at the onset of schizophrenia should not rest only on the presence of behavioural symptoms, some of which will have to remain untreated.