Antipsychotics & Schizophrenia: medication "not providing adequate relief of target symptoms or whose side effect profile is intolerable"

From 1 Boring Old Man blog. Remember, the blog is authored by a psychiatrist with a great ability to analyze statistics and data.

..."When a new admission was presented, the "cause" of the recent psychotic episode was often explained by "he stopped his medication x months ago" said in a somewhat pejorative way – called non-compliance. The authors of this paper suggest an alternative possibility: a medication "not providing adequate relief of target symptoms or whose side effect profile is intolerable." Robert Whitaker [Madness in America, Anatomy of an Epidemic] argues that constant medication of Schizophrenic patients is actually not a positive thing – that it worsens the prognosis. So, since the introduction of the neuroleptics, the discussion has centered on blame – either the patients are non-compliant or their doctors are given to a controlling over-medication – an abuse of power."

Read it HERE.