Antipsychotics

European researchers who reviewed 43 imaging studies of first-episode psychosis found evidence that antipsychotics cause a decrease in gray matter volumes in the brain....

Although cocaine and psychostimulant dependence are thought to be related to increased dopamine release, research from Tokyo and Long Island finds that the effect...

MedPageToday reports that Janssen Pharmaceuticals omitted data from a 2003 study that connected Risperdal with serious side effects. Janssen was previously sued by the FDA for marketing Risperdal for off-label uses and settled for $2.2 billion in 2013. Earlier this year, a man with autism was awarded $2.5 million after growing breasts while on Risperdal. According to MedPage, documents from this latest case reveal missing data tables from a 2003 study “designed to ferret out potential adverse effects of long-term risperidone use.” The missing tables were related to elevated prolactin levels and side effects, including gynecomastia in men.

In a featured article for Psychiatric Services, psychiatrists from Dartmouth raise the alarm on the increasing numbers of children prescribed dangerous antipsychotic drugs. Despite the fact that data on the safety of long-term use of these drugs in this vulnerable population “do not exist,” the rate of children and adolescents being prescribed antipsychotic drugs have continued to increase over the past fifteen years.

A new study published this month in the journal Neuron identifies the mechanism by which antipsychotic drugs can induce parkinsonism, a condition involving movement...

Evidence-Based Mental Health reviews studies (from 1987 to 2011) of antipsychotics in people under 24 years old, finding weak evidence on comparative effectiveness of antipsychotics or...

People diagnosed with schizophrenia experience reductions in brain volume that increase over time, and the amount of those reductions increases in proportion to the...

Researchers in London and Spain, in a prospective, randomized, study of long-term (3 year) effects of first- and second-generation antipsychotics on neurocognition in 79...

Research from Germany finds that people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective diagnoses given multiple medications - an antipsychotic plus a benzodiazepine or more than one...

Common psychotropic medications may be contributing to the higher rates of physical illnesses and mortality in people diagnosed with mental illnesses.

Swedish researchers find, in a study of all women giving birth in Sweden from July 1, 2005 through December 31, 2009 that those taking...

Researchers from the City College of New York and Columbia University published a study this month testing the hypothesis that people diagnosed with schizophrenia treated long-term with antipsychotic drugs have worse outcomes than patients with no exposure to these drugs. They concluded that there is not a sufficient evidence base for the standard practice of long-term use of antipsychotic medications.

Dutch researchers write in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology that, in a prospective study of 7415 persons with diagnoses of schizophrenia, use of a first-generation...

The percentage of seniors in the United States prescribed potentially deadly antipsychotic drugs increases with age. A new study reveals that in the face of serious risks of strokes, fractures, kidney injuries, and death, over seventy-five percent of seniors given antipsychotics do not have a diagnosis for a mental disorder.

This month’s issue of JAMA Psychiatry ran an editorial commenting on recent research revealing that the majority of youth prescribed antipsychotics have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder.

Nearly 90,000 American adults are going to emergency rooms every year in response to adverse events from psychiatric medications, according to a study in...

Common psychiatric medications double the risk of heart attack and triple the risk of stroke, according to research presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress...

Four different studies conducted in different ways examining different groups have linked use of certain psychiatric drugs to bone fracture risks and negative impacts on human bone development.

The editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, in a comment on Morrison et al.'s "Antipsychotics: is it Time to Introduce Patient Choice," announces...

People who take antipsychotic medications experience many side effects which have "major disruptive impact on their lives," according to research in the Journal of Mental Health Nursing.

Researchers in China find an acute reduction in white matter in the frontal lobe following six weeks of antipsychotic treatment for "first-episode schizophrenia". Results...

In a systematic literature review, researchers from Canada and Japan found that the antipsychotic aripiprazole (Abilify) was significantly and causally related to increased increased...

A new study in JAMA Neurology finds that the use of antipsychotic drugs more than doubled the risk of death in patients with Parkinson’s...

New research published in the July issue of The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that the use of mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, antidepressants, and hypnotics during pregnancy is associated with increased health risks to the infant.

"Even in an academic setting with active discussions among psychiatrists regarding issues of metabolic risk ... baseline lipid monitoring is disappointingly low" according to...