I am always confused…!!!
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Akathisia is inner restlessness that leads to a lot of movement. It’s very annoying, but usually just temporary. Tardive dyskinesia is an often permanent movement disorder that you can get from having been on antipsychotics for a long time. It is very serious, and not that uncommon. It involves involuntary movements of the tongue and mouth and other areas.
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akathisia makes you want to move and td makes you move.
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They already answered, akathisia is when you want to move, especially walk, tardive dyskinesia is when your muscles move involuntarily, especially face muscles, there also is acute dystonia that is when your arm muscles, torso, neck or legs move and twist involuntarily. Only TD is permanent or semi-permanent.
They all are terrible for sure, I had akathisia and it was a nightmare, I was lifting both my legs up and down, up and down, I couldn’t stay idle when sitting and I was shaking my legs… Not to mention I was so nervous I had to smoke every ten minutes. I also had the need to lick my lower teeth all day long.
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Akathisia is restlessness; short-term. Tardive dyskinesia is chronic, long-term; irreversible. Both are side-effects of psychotropic medications and result from blockade of dopamine in the brain.
There is actually an entity called tardive akathisia associated with tardive dyskinesia. But generally acute akathisia is seen within the first couple of weeks of treatment.
Don’t even ask me to find it, but 2 years ago there was an article that showed that consistent low dose antipsychotics had less overall exposure to and therefore less antipsychotic-induced TD than patients who stopped their meds and then became exposed to periodic high dose treatment. The mantra was use the lowest effective dose you can (with no help suggesting how you determine this).
Now with second generation agents, obesity and diabetes is the new TD. There has always been an incidence of TD without schizophrenia or exposure to antipsychotics (although people with schizophrenia have a higher incidence of TD even without antipsychotic exposure as compared to the general population), but now we are really hidden in the clouds with the obesity epidemic.
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God I hate akathisia. It’s probably my top reason for dropping APs in the past. Just cannot tolerate it.
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