OBJECTIVES: Long-acting risperidone injectable (LARI) is available for patients with schizophrenia, as advance to depot antipsychotic agents. This work aims to review the literature articles of health outcomes between 1995 and 2005 relating to deport antipsychotic agents and LARI. METHODS: Two databases Ovid Medline and EMBase were used in December 2005 to extract the articles with a focus on health outcomes including effectiveness on compliance/adherence, efficacy and effectiveness on improving psychiatric symptoms and quality of life, health care utilization and cost, cost-effectiveness, dosing information, and treatment patterns of depot antipsychotic agents and LARI. Key words “depot antipsychotics”, “delayed-action preparations”, “long-acting” and “schizophrenia” were used in the search to extract a total of 219 full text articles including previous review articles during the period. RESULTS: While depot antipsychotic agents were shown to be efficacious in improving symptoms and quality of life, and to be well tolerated, the information is limited to show its effectiveness on improving adherence and reducing health care utilization and costs. The treatment and dosing patterns of depot antipsychotic agents were confounded by socio-demographic factors and treatment settings. Generally favourable views on depot antipsychotic agents existed for patients, psychiatrists and nurses. Between 1995 and 2005, there were 5 published cost-effectiveness models in the United States (2), United Kingdom (1), France (1), and Taiwan (1) showing treatment cost saving associated with depot antipsychotics and LARI. Additionally, only 4 depot treatment guidelines including one specifically for dosing and switching and another one for the use of depot in elderly existed in the literature. CONCLUSION: Depot antipsychotic agents and LARI need to be studied in high-quality effectiveness research in patients with schizophrenia, who have problems with treatment adherence, in order to develop evidence-based treatment/rehabilitation alliance for patients, family members, psychiatrists, and nurses.