Lifelong use of antipsychotic drugs, effects, harms

Mental illness is very prone to recurring attacks, and when it occurs, it can cause serious damage to the brain. Currently, there are relatively few treatments for this disease. Many patients often take antipsychotic drugs to maintain their condition. However, if they are taken for life, it will cause great harm to the body. If the dosage is very small, it will not have a suppressive effect. So what are the consequences of taking antipsychotic drugs for life?

First, what are the consequences of taking antipsychotic drugs for life? First of all, we should know that if a patient with mental disorder does not take medication, he will have repeated attacks, and each attack will be more severe, and if the attack is too frequent, it cannot be cured. Why is there no cure? Because repeated attacks of mental illness can indeed damage the brain. The clinical use of psychiatric drugs has relieved many patients with mental disorders from suffering. Large randomized, long-term studies of schizophrenia support the view that antipsychotic treatment is effective in preventing relapse of illness. Some data suggest that maintenance antipsychotic treatment results in better "quality of life" compared with discontinuation, and that maintenance treatment is less likely to lead to worsening of schizophrenia or related disorders or to worse clinical outcomes than discontinuation.

Second, long-term and high-dose use of traditional antipsychotics can cause problems in the brain. Therefore, few doctors recommend the long-term use of large doses of antipsychotics in clinical practice. Generally speaking, the dose for maintenance treatment is smaller than the dose for acute treatment.

Third, in the past, treatments for mental disorders were all based on adequate doses and courses of treatment. However, it was later discovered that high doses during the maintenance period might cause harm to patients, so small-dose maintenance treatments with better safety were chosen. However, small-dose maintenance treatments can also cause some problems, the most common of which is insufficient efficacy. Patients taking large doses have poor compliance, and small doses have poor efficacy. Studies have found that in my country, 49% of schizophrenia patients will relapse within a year even while taking medication.

What are the consequences of lifelong use of antipsychotics? Drug treatment mainly affects the symptoms of schizophrenia, but has little effect on brain age; on the contrary, factors of the disease itself, such as the severity of schizophrenia, length of hospitalization, and outcome, are positively correlated with accelerated brain aging, and the degree of brain aging is mainly related to these factors. In addition, lifestyle also has a certain impact