OLD STUDY: Study reveals how anti-psychotic drugs and schizophrenia affects the brain

Hi everybody !

  • The original article can be read in this link :
    http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/266102.php

  • The most important thing is the article also notice that using anti-psychotic drugs may damage your brain ( brain tissue lost ) . Because of that information i think everybody should take a risk when planning to use anti-psychotic drugs .

  • Hope that my information be helpful , wish that everybody be more healthy !

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I knew when I read the synopsis that the Andreasen study was bound to be misinterpreted, misquoted and taken out of context.

The truth is this: Anti-Ps do effect dopaminergic chains of nerves over time because blocking the dopmaine receptors (which is what anti-Ps do) de-energizes the neurons in the chain long enough to cause very slow de-myelinization. The loss of the myelin insulation will ultimately make those neurons very “slow” and may even kill them.

But it will take decades of use of the modern, atypical anti-Ps at even very high dose levels to kill enough of them to turn the pt into a complete zombie.

(Gawd, I hate it when pts decide their meds are part of some conspiracy.) (But deciding pretty much everything is part of a conspiracy is what the sz mind does.)

All I can say is (facetiously, not suggestively), “Stop taking your anti-Ps, and see what happens.”

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The article is somewhat incomplete, it seems. For it mentions only a control group of healthy subjects. While the relevant control group seems to me to be one of unmedicated psychotic patients. Sure, medicated patients will lose more brain tissue than neurotypicals. But how does it compare to letting florid psychosis run its course? In my case, that is the alternative. I think there was an article posted here that had such a control group and showed that the loss compared to such an unmedicated control group of schizophrenia patients is significantly less. I can imagine that continuous psychosis wears the brain out just as much as it does the mind.

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No ! I think everybody should keep their medical treatment with anti-psychotic drug but they need to understand a risk .

In my opinion : next time if you want to tell everybody to stop using their anti-psychotic drug , you need to be a trusted doctor with alot of respect to have enough responsibility for that suggested :wink: .

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yap study revels bad side of a.p…scared …
we all are in search of effective health friendly psy med…
more might come…if sooner that’s great…

aren’t scientist not able to produce med that activates the brain neuron …
and what are the difference between naturally produce dopamine,serotonin,nor-epinephrine and externally supplied all of this as psy med.question 2 all…

I think we need to make a distinction between typical and atypical anti-psychotics. When I was on the Haldol decoate injection I could not write fiction at all. It killed my imagination dead. Now that I am on Geodon and Seroquel I can write fiction. The brain is made up of billions, if not trillions, of synapses, and I imagine that if one area of the brain ceases to function another area can take over the same job. I have always resented all anti-psychotics because they diminished me in so many ways, but I’ve learned through hard experience that I can’t do without them.

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Yes, I know that taking an antipsychotic is risky - studies reveal that they are horrible on us metabolically - I am more concerned with what it does to my heart as opposed to my brain.

I am going to ask my pdoc to lower my dose down to 2 mg from 2.5 mg - the way I see it, the lower the better

People forget to mention that antipsychotics can kill you. Sudden cardiac arrest and diabetes are two such examples. I would be interested in the difference between unmedicated schizophrenics and medicated schizophrenics: which one loses more grey matter? They also need to start giving neurotypicals antipsychotics and stop worrying about ethics; then we would truly know. I know for a fact the antipsychotics help in certain ways but in the end cause more disability because I have impaired cognition and no motivation to work or go to school.

It’s also interesting to note I have a 3 mm hyper-intensity in my frontal lobe. They say it’s from migraines but they don’t know for certain. I also have other white spots but they’re so small it wasn’t note worthy.

I think it’s best in general to go with the lowest dose that works. Being overmedicated sucks.

Did you actually read what I wrote? Maybe you should go back and do that. (And I do understand that you may not understand English well enough to understand my intended irony.)

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As well as the typically slam-dunk dosing of anti-Ps in the “typical era” vs. the more artful, observation-based dosing of them in the “atypical era.”

Were the docs of the '60s, '70s and '80s any less dichotomistic and absolutistic than their patients? (A lot of innocent people got hurt real bad. Don’t get me started.)

This is old information (almost 3 years old) that has been corrected in new studies. Here - please read and catch up on the science news:

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“Individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) who progress to fully psychotic symptoms have been observed to show a steeper rate of cortical gray matter reduction compared with individuals without symptomatic progression and with healthy control subjects. Whether such changes reflect processes associated with the pathophysiology of schizophrenia or exposure to antipsychotic drugs is unknown.” (from the 2015 study)

I understand that the complexity here may be a bit much for some readers. But suffice it to say that there is not – and never has been – any empirically verified truth to the destruction of cortical neurons by anti-Ps, though it seems possible – owning to neurological reality – that sub-cortical neurons along the dopamine chains could conceivably “die” by virtue of lack of use.

But the anti-P’s involved would almost surely have to be high-potency (eg: Stellazine, Perolixin, Haldol, Risperdal, Zyprexa) and dosage would have to be very high and very lengthy.

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@notmoses hi there …keep it cool dude…

Oh ! I am sorry , i carefully read your post again and i got it ( facetiously ) :smile: .

I think any opinion on schizophrenia by researchers should be taken with a grain of salt. Due to the heterogeny of schizophrenia in patients, their statements can’t be that truthful. I say: overcome your illness with spirit in spite of it all.

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