»Use of drugs in psychiatry«

I would say "was & is"...
3) Although I couldn't find accurate worldwide statistics online I would say that haloperidol is being overtaken by other mental drugs.

8) Offtopic

How on earth can you have an argument about whether this is good evidence or not when it is not obvious what it is attempting to prove?

Most of the newer antipsychotics like the one I take have very few side effects...I don't see why anyone would use a drug with Haldol's side effect profile unless as you say nothing else is available.

That is exactly what I think. Only h_o_h's intolerable behavior has led to the survival of this thread.

I disagree, he beleives Drugs to be good, knn beleives them to be bad, I don't see how this is intolerable.

It's not the "what", but the "how"...
But, you know... it's not intolerable,... it's just...well... holy!...

these are all fairly new drugs to treat this: Abilify ♣ ~ Geodon ♣ ~ Risperdal ♣ ~ Seroquel ♣ ~ Zyprexa ♣ and by new i mean within the last 17 years because the patents haven't ran out

I love you, knn.
That is exactly what I think. Only h_o_h's intolerable behavior has led to the survival of this thread.

Oh poor baby - do you need a shoulder to cry on?

You haven't lived until you've been castigated by a fourteen-year-old. It makes it worth getting out of bed in the morning to listen to this garbage.

You haven't lived until you've been castigated by a fourteen-year-old.

I drank this stuff and I felt lethargic and sedated. I thought I had got away with it. Then a psychologist walked in and said: "Oh, this is embarrassing, Richard, but we'd like you to fill in this test." The embarrassing thing was I had designed the test myself 10 years earlier. I looked at it and I could as soon have climbed Mount Everest. I felt a sense of depression and hopelessness but also an inner sense of restlessness and agitation. It was a combined wanting to do something and not being able to. Then she said: "You don't look too well - would you like some lunch?" I interpreted that as an order - and I've read since that people on neuroleptic drugs take statements as orders. So I said yes. Then she said: "We've a sandwich machine - will that do?" And I said yes because it was all I was up to saying. But I couldn't get the energy to decide what money to use. I just grabbed a coin and it was enough to get a Mars bar, which I was too ill to eat.

Did the drug wear off?

I had to do these neuropsychological tests, and it was embarrassing, but I burst into tears halfway through. I started weeping uncontrollably, so much so that I was given an anticholinergic drug as an antidote and David took me out to get some fresh air. I suddenly felt I had to tell him about all the things I had ever felt guilty about. Then I went back and fell asleep for 3 hours. I woke up with a woozy hangover, like there was a glass wall between me and the world and that lasted for about a week after a single dose. The akathisia - the combined agitation and depression I felt - is experienced by 40 per cent of patients. It tends to go away after about a week, but imagine: you've had a crisis, you're admitted to hospital, you're hearing voices, then someone gives you a drug that makes you feel like that!

But they are designed for sick people...

About 40 per cent of patients have the same experience. That's the great unasked question of psychiatry: what was it like for you? Patients' experiences have been completely ignored.

So are the antipsychotics effective?

It's more complex. There's no doubt these drugs help some people by reducing the hallucinations and delusions. But there are really important caveats. First, something like 30 per cent of patients get benefits from the drugs - and we don't know which ones they will be. Secondly, these drugs have the most horrendous side effects. The old type of antipsychotic drugs produced what we call extrapyramidal effects, including Parkinsonian tremors, tardive dyskinesia (uncontrolled movements of the mouth and tongue) and akathisia.

But surely you just give low doses?

There is a scandal which I must get on my soapbox about - neuroleptic dosage. These drugs were discovered in the late 1940s and in wide use by the 1950s. Bizarrely, the first studies to look at the most appropriate dosage were not published until the 1990s. It turned out that low doses work at least as well as high doses. And for much of that period it wasn't uncommon to find patients on 80 to 90 milligrams of haloperidol. We now consider it irrational to give more than 10 milligrams and better to keep it at 5 milligrams a day, although you can still find patients on higher doses. We've got a massive amount of drug-induced illness - millions of people - and some of them have even been sent to early graves because of the increased risk from heart attacks and various blood disorders. All completely unnecessary.

What about the new antipsychotics?

It turned out the new drugs looked great compared to irrational doses of the old ones, but when compared to rational doses there was hardly any difference. The new drugs don't produce the old side effects, but there are a load of new ones: diabetes, sexual dysfunction, weight gain. I'm not saying drugs never work. If you talk to patients, some will tell you that drugs are a lifesaver and others that drugs have made their lives worse. Quite a few patients now on drugs would be better off without. Perhaps the best thing is to encourage patients to try them and let them decide...

Psychiatry is crap and should be forbidden when I read stuff like that. They should lock away all psychiatrists who give patients drugs that make them suffer. And, I am sorry but: I don't freaking care whether people hear voices or not. Just the possibility that these drugs may torture is enough to forbid them.