What are the side effects of antipsychotics?
Every drug has different side effects. Many of the novel antipsychotic drugs cause weight gain. Some have a propensity to cause diabetes. The classic antipsychotic drugs didn’t have those problems as much, but the reason that they’ve been displaced by the newer drugs to a great extent is that they caused a lot of muscular side effects: loss of facial expression, tremor, stiffness and tardive dyskinesia, involuntary movements of the body, in particular the face if you stay on them a long time. What other medications might people with schizophrenia need? Having a major mental illness is upsetting, so anxiety is an intrinsic symptom of the illness. Although they’re not treating the core of the illness, antianxiety medications are very useful for many people with schizophrenia. Not all of them need it, but for many of them they’re useful. These drugs are also used to help with sleep. One of the common side effects of the antipsychotic drugs is a condition called akathisia, which is a type
