Formerly known as major tranquilizers and neuroleptics, antipsychotic medications are the main class of drugs used to treat people with schizophrenia. They are also used to treat people with psychosis that occurs in bipolar disorder, depression and Alzheimer's disease.
They can cause movement disorders such as twitching and restlessness, sedation and weight gain, and lead to diabetes. Because of these side effects, antipsychotic drugs are usually only used to treat severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Antipsychotics can cause the very symptoms they relieve, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety, poorer cognition, agitation, mania, insomnia, and abnormal movements.
Antipsychotic medications don't 'cure' psychosis, but they are often effective in reducing and controlling many symptoms, including: delusions and hallucinations, such as paranoia and hearing voices. anxiety and serious agitation, for example from feeling threatened. incoherent speech and muddled thinking.
In particular, antipsychotic drugs have been linked to an increased risk of falls, diabetes and heart disease. Older adults are also more likely to be prescribed multiple medications, increasing the likelihood of negative drug interactions.
Previous research has also shown that the use of antipsychotics may raise the risk of metabolic syndrome in patients with schizophrenia. Metabolic syndrome has, in turn, been associated with heart disease and diabetes.
Antipsychotic drugs don't cure psychosis but they can help to reduce and control many psychotic symptoms, including: delusions and hallucinations, such as paranoia and hearing voices. anxiety and serious agitation, for example from feeling threatened. incoherent speech and muddled thinking.
Factor analysis of these items revealed three main effects of antipsychotic medication related to doubt and self-doubt, cognitive and emotional numbing, and social withdrawal. Antipsychotic treatment appears to be connected to a number of negative subjective effects on cognition and emotion.
For neurological, neuropsychological, neurophysiological, and metabolic abnormalities of cerebral function, in fact, there is evidence suggesting that antipsychotic medications decrease the abnormalities and return the brain to more normal function.
Clozapine and olanzapine have the safest therapeutic effect, while the side effect of neutropenia must be controlled by 3 weekly blood controls.
Some people need to keep taking it long term. If you have only had one psychotic episode and you have recovered well, you would normally need to continue treatment for 1–2 years after recovery. If you have another psychotic episode, you may need to take antipsychotic medication for longer, up to 5 years.
Atypical antipsychotics such as quetiapine, aripiprazole, olanzapine, and risperidone have been shown to be helpful in addressing a range of anxiety and depressive symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders, and have since been used in the treatment of a range of mood and anxiety disorders ...
But with the right treatment, most people can live complete and fulfilling lives – thanks mainly to their antipsychotic medication. But of course, all medications have side-effects and for some people on antipsychotics these side-effects can range from mildly debilitating to life threatening.
Antipsychotic medication reduces the severity of serious mental illness (SMI) and improves patient outcomes only when medicines were taken as prescribed.
One of these chemicals is called dopamine. It is thought that high levels of dopamine may cause the brain to function differently and may cause the symptoms of psychosis. Antipsychotics work by blocking the effect of dopamine. This helps reduce psychotic symptoms for many people.
“I was particularly interested in how antipsychotics affect people's sense of themselves because although antipsychotics can reduce symptoms of psychosis, they also dampen down emotions, motivation, and sexual function, which are such important parts of what makes us what we are.”
Amongst the many adverse effects of the first generation, or 'typical' antipsychotics, the most disturbing was Tardive Dyskinesia, which involves uncontrollable movements of face, hands and feet [2].
You might feel a sense of restlessness.
Antipsychotics may cause a side effect known as akathisia, which is a sense of motor restlessness that sometimes feels a lot like symptoms of anxiety.
Schizoaffective disorder.
People with schizoaffective disorder have the same symptoms as people with schizophrenia. But they also have episodes of depression and times when they feel extremely happy or have lots of energy (mania). For more information, see the topics Depression and Bipolar Disorder.
Of the atypical antipsychotics, risperidone is the weakest in terms of atypicality criteria.
The researchers found that individuals with schizophrenia treated with antipsychotics demonstrated progressive loss of gray matter in the brain, compared with healthy controls.
Although these drugs can help prevent psychosis, they can lead to an increase in other negative mental health symptoms, including depression. This is just one reason why antipsychotics aren't an effective method of treating clinical depression or major depressive disorder.
Psychosis is a mental health problem that causes people to perceive or interpret things differently from those around them. This might involve hallucinations or delusions.