J. Douglas Bremner
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 Antipsychotic drugs are approved by the FDA for use in children with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Tourette's syndrome; the only approved antipsychotics for children, however, are Haldol (haloperidol), generic thioridazine, and Orap (pimozide, for Tourette's), which are first-generation antipsychotic drugs. Doctors do have the discretion to prescribe drugs for indications other than those approved by the FDA. |
| Eighteen percent of youth visits to psychiatrists involved antipsychotic treatment; 92% of the antipsychotics prescribed were second generation (from 1993 to 2002). antipsychotic drugs are approved by the FDA for use in children with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Tourette's syndrome; the only approved antipsychotics for children, however, are Haldol (haloperidol), generic thioridazine, and Orap (pimozide, for Tourette's), which are first-generation antipsychotic drugs. Doctors do have the discretion to prescribe drugs for indications other than those approved by the FDA. |
Charles Barber
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 It has been judged that the overreporting of favorable studies has led to a 2 5 percent overestimate of the effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs, for example. Indeed, the greatest single determinant of an outcome of a published study appears to be whether or not a drug company has sponsored the study.77
Sophisticated psychiatrists know to take what they read of a drug in even the best journals with a sizable grain of salt. |
Gary Null, Ph.D.
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 This study examined individual behaviors produced by ascorbic acid in combination with typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs. The combination of antipsychotic drugs with ascorbic acid 250 mg/kg i.p. led to a decrease in open-field parameters when compared with controls. Such in vivo results provide more evidence for ascorbic acids antidopaminergic effects, particularly when combined with antipsychotic drugs.
—L. de Angelis, "Ascorbic Acid and Atypical Antipsychotic Drugs: Modulation of Aminep-tine-Induced Behavior in Mice," Brain Research, 670(2), January 30, 1995, p. 303-307. |
| Ascorbic Acid and the Behavioral Response to Haloperidol: Implications for the Action of antipsychotic drugs," Science, 227(4685), January 25, 1985, p. 438-440.
This study examined individual behaviors produced by ascorbic acid in combination with typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs. The combination of antipsychotic drugs with ascorbic acid 250 mg/kg i.p. led to a decrease in open-field parameters when compared with controls. Such in vivo results provide more evidence for ascorbic acids antidopaminergic effects, particularly when combined with antipsychotic drugs.
—L. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Older antipsychotic medications appear to be no safer than newer antipsychotic drugs in elderly people, and should not be used to replace the newer drugs without careful consideration, according to a study.
THE STUDY
In this study, Dr. Philip Wang, a psychiatrist and epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatry, medicine and health-care policy at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues set out to define the short-term risk of death among elderly patients taking the older, or conventional, antipsychotic medications. |
| BACKGROUND
The issue of replacing one generation of drugs for another has become a concern since the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started requiring newer antipsychotic drugs to carry a "black-box" warning. The warning states that these medications nearly double the risk of death among older patients compared with a placebo.
Older drugs do not carry such a warning—but probably only because the FDA didn't have the necessary data, Wang says.
The elderly are just more vulnerable, and clearly, there's a susceptibility to antipsychotics that was never picked up in trials. |
Andreas Moritz
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 However, in recent months, four major medical organizations have issued simultaneous warnings about the significant risks many of today's atypical antipsychotic drugs carry with them. The harmful side effects they cause include obesity, blood lipid imbalances and adult-onset (Type 2) diabetes. All of these conditions clearly increase the chance of developing heart disease or lead to a greater risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke. |
Jack Challem
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 Vitamin C also enhances the activity of certain antipsychotic drugs, while protecting the brain against amphetamines.
Dosage: Take 1,000 to 10,000 mg daily. Divide the dosage, so that you take it two or three times daily. If you develop diarrhea, you're taking too much. Ignore statements warning that the body cannot use more than 200 mg of vitamin C daily. That paltry recommendation was based on a study of healthy college-age young men, and the researchers acknowledged that it did not apply to women, middle-aged or older people, or those suffering from health problems. |
Dr. Abram Hoffer, MD, FRCP (C) and Dr. Harold D. Foster, PhD
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 Given antipsychotic drugs, fewer than 10% of schizophrenics ever become gainfully employed.
As reported in a study of 42 medical doctors who became schizophrenic and were given nothing but drugs, only 12 went back to practice. This was possible for six of them because they were married to nurses who helped maintain the practice. Dr Hoffer has treated three physicians who were schizophrenic. They all recovered and changed the focus of their practices to become orthomolecular doctors. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 Neuroleptics (Thorazine, approved for use in 1954, was the first one) are called "first generation" antipsychotic drugs. After six to eight weeks of treatment, about 20% of all patients have a complete remission of their symptoms. Approximately 30% of all treated patients experience a relapse within two years, compared with an 80% relapse rate without treatment. One meta-analysis found that they provide "modest to moderate gains in multiple cognitive domains."50 The problem is that prolonged use often results in symptoms (involuntary movement, tremors, facial grimaces, etc. |
Charles Barber
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| What led to the demise of the lobotomy era was not any newfound compassion or enlightenment, but simply the emergence of antipsychotic drugs that made psychosurgery "redundant."16
In the United States, Community Psychiatry began when the profession took its first tentative steps into office practice between the world wars. The emigration of European psychoanalysts after World War I, and particularly after World War II, led to the establishment of office-based practices, particularly in large eastern cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. |
| Betty was a victim of neuroleptic malignant syndrome, a rare adverse reaction to antipsychotic drugs. What causes the syndrome isn't clear, but it appears to be related to a blockage of the dopamine receptors in the hypothalamus and spinal cord, among other areas. Symptoms include rigid muscles, extremely high temperatures, sweating, unstable blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, and abnormal increases in the number of white blood cells. While the mortality rate used to be 10 to 30 percent, it is now greatly reduced to perhaps 5 or 10 percent, largely because of better awareness and detection. |
| The worst adverse reaction to antipsychotic drugs is extremely rare but can be lethal. It is called neuroleptic malignant syndrome. I encountered it only once, with another of my clients.
Betty was staring up at me—or so I wanted to believe. The closer I looked I saw that there was nothing registering in her eyes. She was merely looking up, without recognition or comprehension. Her body was covered in sweat, her face pallid, her eyes blank and unmoving. She was hooked up to monitors and what looked to be a million dollars' worth of machines. She had a high fever and couldn't move. |
Mark Sircus
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 On April 25, 2005, the Ohio Columbus Dispatch reported an investigation of state Medicaid records that found 18 newborn to 3 years-old babies in Ohio had been prescribed antipsychotic drugs in July 2004. It is a horrible crime and terrible sadness what is being done to the children by pediatricians and psychiatrists who live by the increasingly popular creed to drug the kids with toxic substances. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Chemotherapy doesn't work, antidepressant drugs cause weight gain, diabetes drugs cause liver damage, statin drugs damage the heart, antipsychotic drugs caused suicidal behavior, arthritis drugs cause heart attacks, blood pressure drugs cause circulation deficiencies... need I go on? There's hardly a popular drug in the arsenal of Big Pharma that isn't fraudulently marketed, promoted and prescribed. |
Jack Challem
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| It may enhance the activity of antipsychotic drugs.
What else you should know: Many physicians assume that patients have an adequate intake of vitamin C unless they have symptoms of scurvy, the classic deficiency disease in which blood oozes from old wounds as the body literally disintegrates. Negligible amounts of vitamin C will prevent scurvy, which actually describes the final stage of deficiency before death. Mark Levine, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher at the U.S. |
Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan
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 Tremors are also a common reaction to antipsychotic drugs, theophylline (for asthma), Dilantin (for epilepsy), and Compazine (a tranquilizer and antinausea medicine), as well as the herbal stimulants ephedra, ginkgo biloba, and ginseng.
Tremors sometimes signal alkalosis, a pH imbalance (too little acid in body fluids). Other signs may include muscle twitching, lightheadedness, numbness, and tingling. Alkalosis-related tremors can be a clue to the eating disorder bulimia. The good news is that alkalosis is easily treated. |
Dr. Abram Hoffer, MD, FRCP (C) and Dr. Harold D. Foster, PhD
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| Modern psychiatry argues that once schizophrenics have been stabilized on antipsychotic drugs, they must continue them for life because of risk of relapse. This is a new principle in medicine. One does not keep a patient who has been treated with penicillin for pneumonia on the antibiotic forever, just to prevent a relapse sometime in the future. For schizophrenic patients, it is better to have been well for a long time with a slight risk of relapse than be subjected to continuous drug toxicity. |
Gary Null and Amy McDonald
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 Abram Hoffer adds that antipsychotic drugs in particular induce "the tranquilizer psychosis, characterized by a decrease in the intensity of the psychotic symptoms," though "induced in its place are apathy, disinterest, poor judgment, difficulty in thinking and concentration and inability to work."
The more we learn about how the brain and the rest of the body work, the harder it is to believe that disease and deterioration are inevitable as we age. Dr. Parris Kidd has, like many others, been insisting that "the modern pattern of brain deterioration is definitely not normal. |
Mark Sircus
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| Consider the antipsychotic drugs used to treat children with autism for behavior control. Zyprexa, Risperdal, and others can cause hyperglycemia, which causes increased excretion of orally administered magnesium.
While drugs bind with magnesium, diminishing its availability in the body, the threat of depletion doesn't end there. Two cans of soda per day (all of which contain phosphates) can also bind up significant amounts of magnesium. The phosphorus contained in these "harmless" beverages prevents the absorption of magnesium ions in the GI tract. |
Gabriel Cousens
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 Some doctors are a little concerned, as increasing numbers of children are given antipsychotic drugs for anxiety and conditions like autism. This is because these drugs can promote weight gain and therefore elevate the risk of diabetes. The anti-psychotic Zyprexa, for example, has been implicated in causing weight gain and diabetes. With increased weight, there is increased diabetes. Little research has been done on the long-term impact of Type-2 diabetes on children, over their life span. The chronic complications that follow tend to happen ten to fifteen years after the onset. |
Gary Null and Amy McDonald
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| Now I am on a regimen of vitamins and antipsychotic drugs. The vitamins, I am told, enhance the good effects of the drugs so that I don't have to take high doses of the drugs in order to remain normal or stable. Before I got on this regimen I had not been taking any vitamins. Using the orthomolecular approach to help treat my schizophrenia, I basically feel normal and have my life back again.
—Howard
Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic mental disorder that affects approximately 1 percent of the American population. |
| The condition develops in 15 to 20 percent of people who take antipsychotic drugs for one year or more. Women and the elderly are affected more often than the rest of the population. Tardive dyskinesia is difficult to treat because symptoms often continue even after the offending medication is stopped.
Dr. Peter Breggin often testifies in court cases brought by people who have suffered these reactions to their medications. |
| METHODS: Detailed light and ultrastructural examination was carried out on skeletal muscle from three cases of NMS, two associated with recreational drugs (3,4-methlenedioxymethylamphetamine (MDMA, Ecstasy) and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)) and one with antipsychotic drugs (fluoxetine (Prozac) and remoxipride hydrochloride monohydrate (Roxiam)). RESULTS: The muscles were grossly swollen and oedematous in all cases, in one with such severe local involvement that the diagnosis of sarcoma was considered. On microscopy, there was conspicuous oedema. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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| Probably more important is the sedating effect of antipsychotics (previously known as "major tranquilizers"), which makes their use for Alzheimer's patients with agitated behavior very seductive.
The antipsychotic drugs developed for schizophrenia are actually used just as much or more in elderly patients with dementia. One study of all the studies of antipsychotics for the treatment of behavioral problems in demented patients found data on 3,353 patients randomized to an antipsychotic and 1,757 randomized to placebo that revealed a 1. |
Melody Petersen
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 Studies have shown these antipsychotic drugs, including Zyprexa and Risperdal, do not help patients with Alzheimer's. Instead, the drugs appear to increase their risk of death.
In the late 1980s, doctors began prescribing Tambocor and Enkaid, which were approved to treat irregular heartbeats, to patients who did not have these symptoms but had suffered heart attacks. Years later a government study showed that the drugs almost tripled the death rate among such patients. In his 1995 book Deadly Medicine, Thomas J. |
Gary Null and Amy McDonald
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| The presumption is that choline and lecithin will help correct the imbalance that was created by the traditional antipsychotic drugs."
A 2003 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded that branched-chain amino acids reduced abnormal, involuntary body movements in men with tardive dyskinesia by an average 36.5 percent when compared with a placebo. The amino acids were delivered in the form of Tarvil, a "medical food" powdered drink product.
In his article in the International Guide to the World of Alternative Mental Health (www.alternativementalhealth.com), Dr. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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| As I mentioned above, antipsychotic drugs should not be used to control the behavior of elderly people unless they are really suffering from psychosis (e.g., seeing or hearing-things that aren't there); they have not been shown to be helpful, and they increase the risk of death.
The increased risk of stroke in elderly patients with dementia who take olanzepine prompted the Canadian Drug Regulatory authorities to send a letter to doctors in Canada warning them of this potential danger. |
| I recommend that patients with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia should not be given antipsychotic drugs unless they have clear forms of psychosis (e.g., seeing or hearing things that are not there or having frank delusions or incorrect beliefs) as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
NONSTEROIDAL ANTI-INFLAMMATORY DRUGS
There is some question about whether nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) prevent the development of Alzheimer's. With risks of their own, these medications should not be used for Alzheimer's prevention or treatment. |
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