Old and New Drug-Induced Problems

Abstract

As well as understanding the immediate effects produced by anti-psychotic drugs and how these might impact on psychological symptoms and challenging behaviour, a drug-centred understanding focuses the spotlight back on the physical alterations that can result from taking these drugs, especially over long periods. Looking at how evidence of the serious complications of antipsychotic use emerged also reveals how modern psychiatry, sometimes, but not always, guided by the pharmaceutical industry, has constructed an agenda that enables it to avoid having to confront the harm its treatments can produce. As we saw with the story of tardive dyskinesia, tactics include blaming the underlying condition and minimising, obscuring or simply ignoring the evidence.