But prolonged untreated mental illness can cause worse brain damage
bah, it is widely known and undeniable how much treatment and early treatment improve the long term prognosis even if we still don’t know the mechanism that makes this possible (brain damage? synaptic plasticity?..).
Furthermore they can’t compare the usage of aps for sz with their off-label usage (anxiety, insomnia, depression) where the dosage is much lower.
Oh man that’s scary. I hope I can get into psych research like I want to and makes these drugs not so horrible. Or at least find out what makes somethings work.
Don’t let this scare you. A lot of things can cause tissue loss in the brain. The assumption that tissue loss equals brain damage should always be tempered with the pretty obvious uselessness of the alternative to AP treatment: Do you want a working brain that’s 10% smaller or a slightly larger brain that doesn’t really work at all?
Don’t base your treatment choices on scare tactics, guys. Base them on how well you function. All treatments have risks. If you are lucky, you can work with your doctor and manage without meds after you’ve been stable and non-psychotic for a few years. If not, be glad there are meds to treat this illness, because they haven’t always been around and things weren’t better before.
Also, I’m pretty sure this whole study was already debunked, when it was proven that schizophrenics who didn’t take medication had more gray matter loss than those who were medication compliant.
This is the study that shows gray matter loss is more severe in untreated psychosis than in psychosis treated with antipsychotics. It is dated later than the most recent studies on the previous article. Don’t believe the hype, kids.