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Psychotic Disorders pp 263–275Cite as

Adjunctive Medications

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Part of the book series: Current Clinical Psychiatry ((CCPSY))

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a syndrome with psychotic and nonpsychotic dimensions. Antipsychotics primarily treat the psychotic symptom cluster, and clinicians often add adjunctive medications to target symptoms not fully addressed by antipsychotics (e.g., depression, anxiety, insomnia) or to manage side effects (e.g., extrapyramidal side effects). This chapter reviews the benefits but also the risks of several medication categories that are frequently used in addition to backbone treatment with antipsychotics: antidepressants, anxiolytics and sedative-hypnotics, antiepileptic drugs, lithium, and anticholinergics. A section on herbal remedies and supplements concludes this chapter.

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    • Correll CU, Rubio JM, Inczedy-Farkas G, Birnbaum ML, Kane JM, Leucht S. Efficacy of 42 pharmacologic cotreatment strategies added to antipsychotic monotherapy in schizophrenia: systematic overview and quality appraisal of the meta-analytic evidence. JAMA Psychiatry. 2017;74:675–84. – An extensive review of the literature on adjunctive approaches, with no clear winner.

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    1. Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

      Oliver Freudenreich

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    1. Oliver Freudenreich
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    Freudenreich, O. (2020). Adjunctive Medications. In: Psychotic Disorders. Current Clinical Psychiatry. Humana, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29450-2_19

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29450-2_19

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    • Publisher Name: Humana, Cham

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