Major depression remains a serious condition that often proves refractory to pharmacological or psychotherapeutic interventions. Because depression can have many “faces”, clinicians should be aware of the great symptom variability among depressed patients and consider subforms when prescribing medication. In a sizeable amount of patients (up to 25%, Coryell et al., 1984), depression presents with [read the full story…]
Getting patients to take their medication as prescribed is notoriously difficult. Regardless of condition only about 50% of patients adhere to prescribed regimes. This is particularly the case in chronic or complex conditions worldwide and improving this problem has the potential to save considerable health burden and costs. Adherence in mental health is no different. [read the full story…]
Because of a more favourable side effects profile (not necessarily clinical superiority), second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) are today the most commonly used drugs to treat psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia (Jones et al., 2006). While rather frequent adverse reactions, including weight gain, diabetes or sedation, are largely recognised, recent studies point at increased risk of pneumonia [read the full story…]
Anti-psychotic medications comprise between 30–50% of all psychotropics prescribed for people with learning disabilities. One of the potential side effects is metabolic syndrome (a group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk for coronary artery disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes in people with learning disabilities who have been prescribed antipsychotic medication.) [read the full story…]
For over 30 years researchers have found that people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia have, on average, differences on brain scans compared to people without. Not everybody with a diagnosis of schizophrenia will have these differences and it has not yet been possible to use brain scanning as a test to work out whether someone [read the full story…]
Antipsychotic medications are often the first line of treatment for schizophrenia and have been effective at treating florid symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. Fluphenazine was one of the first antipsychotics to become available on the market and has now been appearing on prescriptions for over 5 decades. Despite the arrival of newer generations of [read the full story…]
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a condition that has recently been given a significant amount of TV airplay and media coverage, perhaps most notably in the Channel 4 documentary Jon Richardson: A little bit OCD, which received mostly good reviews from mental health groups. Despite this reasonable public profile, our knowledge about the best way [read the full story…]
It is estimated that in UK, up to 200,000 people with learning disabilities are given anti-psychotic drugs, which can have powerful side effects, like risk of weight gain, impotence and strain to the cardiovascular system, and with little evidence of their efficacy in treating challenging behaviour. There are equal concerns about the use of anti-convulsant [read the full story…]
Schizophrenia is considered a chronic long-term debilitating condition, affecting about 1% of the population. There has been considerable debate about which of the anti-psychotic medications are the best treatments. The debate has usually been structured around typical (older) and atypical (newer) anti-psychotic medications. The revised NICE guidelines (2009) moved towards a more neutral stance between [read the full story…]
Bipolar disorder features as one of the top ten disabling disorders for working age adults. There are numerous risks including suicide, increased mortality and reduced social functioning associated with the disorder. Key to enabling recovery is preventing acute episodes from occurring, with each episode increasing the risk of future ones. Therefore ensuring long-term maintenance treatment [read the full story…]
