Martin Harrow’s study tracing the effects of antipsychotics on 139 schizophrenia (SZ) and mood-disordered patients over 20 years, just published in Psychological Medicine, finds that “At each follow-up assessment over the 20 years, a surprisingly high percentage of SZ treated with antipsychotics longitudinally had psychotic activity. More than 70% of SZ continuously prescribed antipsychotics experienced psychotic activity at four or more of six follow-up assessments over 20 years. Longitudinally, SZ not prescribed antipsychotics showed significantly less psychotic activity than those prescribed antipsychotics . . . the condition of the majority of SZ prescribed antipsychotics for multiple years would raise questions as to how many of them are truly in remission.”
This study was paid for by a grant from the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care.
Harrow, M., Jobe, T., Faiull, R.; Does treatment of schizophrenia with antipsychotic medications eliminate or reduce psychosis? A 20-year multi-follow-up study. Psychological Medicine. March, 2014. doi:10.1017/S0033291714000610