There may also be reasons that you want to stop taking antipsychotics. For example, you may be experiencing unpleasant side effects. Or you may want to try other ways of coping with your mental health. Some doctors may suggest that you keep taking antipsychotics for some time.
The person no longer believes that medication is needed.
In fact, people usually do feel better right after stopping medication—and symptoms may not come back for months. Patients often stop medication after about a year has passed because they want to see if they can do as well without it.
After a first episode of psychosis in schizophrenia and related disorders, stopping antipsychotics is considered when the patient has made a full recovery and been well for at least 12 months.
Higher rates of hospital admission or death have also been reported after the short-term use of antipsychotics in older adults, suggesting that these drugs should be prescribed with extreme caution.
Sedation, or sleepiness, is a common side effect of many antipsychotics. It is more common with certain antipsychotics than others, such as chlorpromazine and olanzapine. Sedation can happen during the day as well as at night. So if you experience this you might find it very hard to get up in the morning.
Neuroleptic malignant syndrome: This rare but serious complication is usually associated with the use of high doses of typical antipsychotics early in treatment. Signs include fever, muscle stiffness and delirium.
Amongst the many adverse effects of the first generation, or 'typical' antipsychotics, the most disturbing was Tardive Dyskinesia, which involves uncontrollable movements of face, hands and feet [2].
Antipsychotic Black Box Warning (full text)
Analyses of 17 placebo-controlled trials (modal duration* of 10 weeks), largely in patients taking atypical antipsychotic drugs, revealed a risk of death in drug-treated patients of between 1.6 to 1.7 times the risk of death in placebo-treated patients.
It may be hypothesized that in altered and/or hyperdopaminergic states, which may underlie schizophrenia symptoms [15], antipsychotic drugs improve cognition, whereas in bipolar patients without hyperdopaminergia, antipsychotic treatment may induce suboptimal cognitive functioning [6].
After symptom remission, continuation of antipsychotic treatment is associated with lower relapse rates and lower symptom severity compared to dose reduction/discontinuation. Therefore, most guidelines recommend continuation of treatment with antipsychotic medication for at least 1 year.
If you stop antipsychotics suddenly it can cause 'rebound psychosis'. This means that the symptoms of your illness return suddenly, and you may become unwell again. This is also known as 'relapse'. If you or your family or friends think you are becoming unwell again, you should speak to your doctor.
While not a certainty, long‐term antipsychotic treatment is a very common outcome for people with schizophrenia.
There has been a study that suggests antipsychotics are associated with possible cortical reconfiguration and gray matter loss, but correlational data also suggests patients who consume antipsychotics, like people with schizophrenia, tend to engage in unhealthy habits like smoking which may exacerbate gray matter loss.
They can cause movement disorders such as twitching and restlessness, sedation and weight gain, and lead to diabetes. Because of these side effects, antipsychotic drugs are usually only used to treat severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Benzodiazepines have been proposed as an alternative therapy to standard antipsychotic treatments in an attempt to improve functional outcomes and treat symptoms that are not addressed by the antipsychotic medications.
Blocking the action of dopamine.
Most antipsychotic drugs are known to block some of the dopamine receptors in the brain. This reduces the flow of these messages, which can help to reduce your psychotic symptoms.
Atypical antipsychotics carry a black-box warning for increased risk of death and cerebrovascular events in dementia, although typical antipsychotics appear no safer.
These first-generation antipsychotics have frequent and potentially significant neurological side effects, including the possibility of developing a movement disorder (tardive dyskinesia) that may or may not be reversible.
The adverse effects of antipsychotic medications range from relatively minor tolerability issues (e.g., mild sedation or dry mouth) to very unpleasant (e.g., constipation, akathisia, sexual dysfunction) to painful (e.g., acute dystonias) to disfiguring (e.g., weight gain, tardive dyskinesia) to life threatening (e.g., ...
Atypical antipsychotics can cause adverse effects of weight gain, hyperlipidemia, diabetes mellitus, QTc prolongation, extrapyramidal side effects, myocarditis, agranulocytosis, cataracts, and sexual side effects, which this activity will discuss here.
Antipsychotics can cause the very symptoms they relieve, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety, poorer cognition, agitation, mania, insomnia, and abnormal movements.
Psychosis may be a symptom of a mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or severe depression. However, a person can experience psychosis and never be diagnosed with schizophrenia or any other disorder.
Psychosis is when people lose some contact with reality. This might involve seeing or hearing things that other people cannot see or hear (hallucinations) and believing things that are not actually true (delusions).
Acute dystonias, akathisia, and parkinsonism have long been recognized as extrapyramidal side effects which occur in susceptible individuals who are taking neuroleptic (antipsychotic) drugs.