The principle of clinical equipoise in medical practice usually implies a situation of uncertainty in the selection of an appropriate treatment. This is a case of not being able to choose a weighted apparatus to evaluate the effectiveness of a proposed therapy plan. The clinical equipoise strategy proposes to create an ethical basis for finding the most appropriate treatment. Traditionally, this practice begins with a null hypothesis. This type of hypothesis states that the physician’s preferred approach has no disadvantages or advantages over other methods (Friedman et al., 2017). This is done in order to eliminate the possible automatic preference that a specialist may unconsciously give to one of the treatments. Further, a number of comparative tests are carried out only as a result of which it becomes possible to really determine the advantages of one method or drug over another.
The principle of equipoise has certain characteristics when applied to the selection of antidepressant and antipsychotic treatments. Monitoring the patient’s psychodynamics in the first weeks of drug selection shows effectiveness at the stage of immediate reaction to the drug. An analysis of the behavior, speech, cognitive changes and concentration of the patient is included in the description of psychic dynamics. However, the comparison of the two types of treatment here is practically difficult due to the long period of post-effects inherent in antidepressant drugs. The alternating use of the two types of prescription is risky in psychopharmacology and can harm the patient’s mental health. The pharmacological characteristics of drugs require analysis and comparison since the human body can react to drugs of this type extremely unpredictably (Gardner, 2018). Pharmacogenomics can make it possible to more accurately draw up an individual treatment plan with sufficient information about the patient’s generic clinical picture. However, bringing the two types of drugs for treatment could still take months or even years of trial. Thus, the search for the most effective treatment from the point of view of direct mental analysis with the possible use of pharmacogenetics and observation in the long term seems to be the optimal solution for the patient.
References
Friedman, L. M., Furberg, C. D., DeMets, D., Reboussin, D. M., Granger, C. B. (2017). Fundamentals of clinical trials. Springer.
Gardner, D. M. (2018). Antipsychotics and their side effects. Cambridge University Press.