Epidemiology of Clozapine Use in Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia

This project will use routinely collected electronic health records from South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) to examine if people who have treatment resistant schizophrenia – e.g., who don’t respond to usual antipsychotic medication – are offered the specialist treatment for this condition, called clozapine, and how soon this happens. We will also compare these findings with data from Cambridgeshire services (CRATE) and national audit data (NCAP). Our aim is to understand what goes wrong so that we can offer clozapine earlier, which in turn can make people better quicker, reducing symptoms, improving quality of life, and even allowing people to live for longer.