I've written previously about the potential negative impact of long term use of psychotropic medication on the brain. This new article in the Archives of General Psychiatry provides further evidence. Antipsychotics used to treat schizophrenia appear to cause a loss of brain tissue over time. Subtle but important cognitive impairments have long been noted in schizophrenics but were thought to be a result of the disorder itself. Now it is becoming increasingly clear that these effects are due to the drugs used to treat schizophrenia. Robert Whitaker has written extensively about this phenomenon in Anatomy of An Epidemic. Antipsychotics are not the only psychiatric drug that cause significant problems for people. However, the antipsychotics are of particular concern for two reasons. The first is the change in the brain itself, as described in the article linked below. The second reason is the widespread prescription of anti-psychotics for non-psychotic reasons. Antipsychotics are heavily marketed for other symptoms including depression and mood lability. And, as I've written previously, they are increasingly used with children. Psychiatry and BigPharma have invested very heavily in the notion of every human problem as a "brain disease" due to "chemical imbalances" that can only be remedied with drugs prescribed, of course, by psychiatrists. We are beginning to see the results of this overly simplistic, reductionistic model of human behavior.
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