Thiothixene and Thioridazine in Anxiety

¹ Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Pharmacology, University of Pennsylvania, and Director of Psychopharmacology, Research Unit, Philadelphia, General Hospital, 203 Piersol Building, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, U.S.A.
² Member of the Private Practice Research Group, Philadelphia General Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104, U.S.A.

A total of 155 anxious neurotic out-patients participated in this double-blind drug trial of thiothixene, thioridazine, and placebo. Ninety-six patients completed at least four weeks of treatment. Thioridazine produced the most and placebo the least amount of side effects. A few significant trends for both active drugs to produce more improvement than placebo appeared after two weeks but not after four or six weeks of treatment. Even at the two week period, however, treatment differences were somewhat less than those usually observed with anti-anxiety agents. One reason for this finding may be the tendency, observed in this and in other studies, for physicians to assign more treatment-resistant patients to trials involving anti-psychotic than to those involving anti-anxiety agents. While initial level of anxious and overall neurotic psychopathology had no differential effect on treatment outcome, initial level of secondary depression had a mild effect, both drugs producing more improvement in the initially high than in the initially low depressed anxious patient. Thus, unless further research, which we hope may be conducted with less treatment-resistant patients, refutes the present findings, the usefulness of thiothixene and thioridazine as anti-anxiety agents must be considered to be at best rather limited.