Successful treatment of most chronic illnesses has been complicated by the difficulty in taking medication continually over an extended period of time. Partial or non compliance is not a unique problem for most psychiatric disorders, however, for psychotic disorders, the estimated rate of non-compliance may be as great as 80%.

Compliance is not an all or nothing phenomenon, patients are often “partially compliant” . Compliance is best understood in a dimensional rather than categorical way. Non-compliance can be either overt or covert. There has always been a discrepancy between level of estimation of compliance among patients and clinicians with tendency tom either over or under estimate the magnitude of the problem.

Non-adherence in schizophrenia is a major preventable cause of morbidity with significant personal, social and economic costs. Compliance is of a particular importance in those patients who are experiencing their first psychotic or bipolar episode.

Up to 80% of patients with schizophrenia fail to comply with their medication regimen at some point during the course of their treatment. Early warning signs of such partial compliance may be confused by some clinicians with non-response to treatment and may result in switching to alternative oral antipsychotic medication, adding adjunctive medication or even worse in the form of relapse or hospitalization.

There are some effective and comprehensive strategies which can improve adherence to medication ranging from psycho-education to relapse prevention and the specific compliance therapy. Depot antipsychotic medication has several advantages over oral medication though they still have an image problem.