What prompted that study? Why test so many antipsychotic drugs so relatively late in the game?
To understand why the study was necessary, you have to understand the history and development of antipsychotic drugs. These drugs were invented in the 1950s and were then known as neuroleptic drugs. The term was derived from the ability of these drugs to cause a kind of psychomotor paralysis, a characteristic slowness or rigidity of the animals or people who took them. But at the same time these drugs produced a near-miraculous quelling of psychosis, for which there had never been an effective treatment. After the prototype of this kind of drug was developed, a series of similar drugs, essentially analogues, were introduced. They all had the same therapeutic property but varied in terms of the potency and the therapeutic dose at which they had to be administered. Through this process of essentially imitating the prototype with relatively specific or minor refinements in potency and side effects, a whole cohort of antipsychotic drugs were developed, which eventually came to be known as
