After reading up on some of the side effects and long time side effects I think that neuroleptics are prescribed far too often and easily.
I used to have an online magazine for and by teenagers suffering from clincial depression which a friend took over at my request last year.
So I know that I am not the only one who has been put on neuroleptics though diagnosed with nothing more than moderate depression.
At the time I was too messed up to ask many questions and my psychatrist didnt tell much more than that it was neccessary. She prescribed them along with anti depressants and anti anxiety medicamentation after a 5 minutes talk with me. My mother was also in the room, so you can guess that my answers to her questions were not the same as they would have been had we been alone.
I stopped taking the neuroleptics back in may or june 2000. The side effects however, never stopped.
About 2 or 3 times per day I twitch like a madman and sometimes, shortly before I fall asleep I twitch so that I find myself sitting in my bed - which would look pretty frightning if anybody saw it - cause acutally I look like I ve seen a ghost. (Widened eyes - strange breathing sound… I guess you can imagine)
So… all I really needed was an anti deprassant and okay - maybe an anti anxiety med… but NOT neuroleptics.
It is shitty that over here (Austria) stuff like st. john’s wort is prescriotional and actually hard to get - but every single psychiatrist will randomly prescribe neuroleptics like candy.
50% of the people who have ever taken neuroleptics end up with the twitching thing I talk about. Many with much worse stuff than I did. Ever seen one of those mad faces people in the loonybin make? Well… that s not their way of saying “hey! Look! I am mad” it just tells you that they are on neuroleptics, cause those mad faces are one of the many side effects.
dodgy
Neuroleptics are vile chemicals! Sorry you had a run-in with them.
I’m not against their legal existence, but I hate the way shrinks prescribe them, and organizations like Alliance for the Mentally Ill praise them, without any acknowledgement of their down side!
We really need better laws, and the ENFORCEMENT of existing ones, that sharply restrict the circumstances under which these can be administered without informed consent.
PS: Come take a peek at my web site and leave a comment if you’d like!
The action of most psychoactive drugs (not just neuroleptics), aren’t well understood, but in too many cases, it’s what’s available. And, unfortunately, too many doctors write out a prescription for drug X without enough information about either drug X or the patient’s specific condition.
In the US (where I live, and where the bulk of my experience comes from), much of the pressure to prescribe medications for psychiatric conditions comes from drug companies (who stand to profit from drug sales), and from insurance companies (who stand to profit from not having to pay for lengthy hospitalizations and long-term counseling). I have been fortunate to have therapists who have worked with my MD to make recommendations on medications (such as whether I even needed them, and if I did, which ones), and MDs who were patient enough to try different medications until I found one that worked with a minimum of side effects.
Do I advocate regulations restricting the use of psychiatric medications? Nope. This is a decision that belongs with a physician and a patient. Do I advocate increased education on psychiatric disorders and their treatment? You better believe it. I also think that some of the (especially) older drugs need to be re-tested against current guidelines, then weed out the ones that are dangerous.
Robin
BD, I’m really sorry to hear that you have become another victim of Western medicine’s bad habit of “bandaid” medication. Modern medicine has achieved many miracles, this practice just doesn’t happen to be one of them.
Treating the symptoms instead of the cause is marginally effective at best and can quite often be more than a little damaging to the patient. The underlying problems are basically swept under the rug and the patient is medicated to the point where they are no longer a problem to those around them. None of this means that any progress has been made for the one who is suffering.
In extreme cases, such as OCD and paranoid schizophrenia, medication can be quite beneficial. All too often though, these powerful and neurochemically altering drugs are handed out like aspirin.
I do not look forward to the time when all of the pigeons come home to roost after decades of this quackery. It saddens me to hear of the side effects that you are experiencing Dodgy. It is why I remain highly skeptical about the overall value and long term efficacy of prescribing these drugs.
[sup]PS: I ALSO HUMBLY APOLOGIZE FOR A CRACK I MADE A WHILE BACK ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT WE COULD TELL YOU HAD STOPPED BEING OVERMEDICATED. I CAN SEE NOW THAT YOU ARE GOING THROUGH HELL WITH THIS AND I AM SORRY FOR WHAT I SAID.[/SUP]
ah - never mind zenster 
I ll just write a book and make millions with a few little twitches 
msrobyn the retesting of old drugs against current guidelines would be perfect.
What got me to write this thread was a new webpage a friend made (unfortunatelly in German) about violation of human rights in psychatric wards. I had the luck to keep out of the bin, but I have friends who checked in/were comitted and each of them can tell horror stories.
Unfortunatelly nobody seems to give a fuck about what happens to the mentally ill. Just fill them up with tranquilizers and leave them to their thoughts. Yes, there are good places too, but they are so rare…
The webpage states that 5% of all kids and teens in Germany have some kind of mental illness… I guess other country are no diffrent…
dodgy