Differential effects of chlordiazepoxide and fluphenazine in two anxious patient populations

Fluphenazine and chlordiazepoxide were evaluated for therapeutic effectiveness in a double-blind study carried out with anxious neurotic patients attending either a hospital clinic or a general practitioner''s office. All patients had significantly lower psychopathology scores after treatment than before, the general practice sample improving significantly more than the hospital clinic sample. While there was no significant difference in the degree of improvement produced by each drug in the general practice sample, in the hospital clinic sample, chlordiazepoxide was significantly more effective than fluphenazine, but only when using the somatic symptom cluster of the Physician Questionnaire as improvement criterion. Differences in population characteristics, primarily in social class and its related variables, but also in treatment set were suggested as important non-specific factors, which, by interactions with specific drug effects, influenced significantly the results observed in the present study. This study thus confirms the 2 hypotheses stated earlier in the introduction.