ainept.com/faq.html) > You are required to keep the treatment schedule (medication doses) and return > any unused medication to us at the end of the trial. ------ philip1209 I would love to hear an interview on this topic from Phil Duffy. He's a clinical psychologist who did the research on this study: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._C._Nutt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._C._Nutt) ------ jessaustin Another thing that never seems to be discussed is that long-term use of antipsychotics almost certainly comes at the cost of cognitive decline. This isn't really surprising, since we now understand that these drugs actually directly affect areas of the brain that are strongly associated with those tasks. It would make sense that they have permanent effects on cognition. It seems like an obvious conflict of interest that so much research money is being paid to doctors who also profit from those drugs. Surely we can find a better way to investigate the effects of neuroleptics on healthy people. ~~~ gozur88 The doctors doing the research are paid $40-70/hr. You can find some ineffective antipsychotics for less than $20 a pill. There's nothing wrong with that, it's the free market at work. ------ mcherm I'm not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional of any sort, but I've been observing psychiatry in the US from the other side, having worked for large government healthcare organizations for more than 15 years. When I first started hearing about this sort of thing happening, it came out that people in the mental health field didn't know anything about this and it was an afterthought to just order them from their suppliers. But now, it seems, at least in California, that everyone's on it. When the government started passing laws about this, it was not to make people think they are better than other people. It was to enable people to live productive lives with as little difficulty as possible -- that is, enable them to be as productive as the average population without being "crazy". Since that's exactly what many of them would like to do, they should not be punished or stigmatized because they decide they want to use the medication. Now, clearly the people being punished are other people: "normal" people who might get unlucky enough to come into contact with a mentally ill person. (The one upside to the drug problem is that it causes many of us in the US to discover that many people live normal productive lives with mental health problems.) These people were never on these drugs to begin with. They were not aware of this, and it would not help them, so the argument is that they somehow failed to exercise self-control. Now, what does that mean, other than to say that they don't believe in the value of the medications? Do they just not believe in the value of people with mental illness? Or did they just not believe in this drug because they heard it caused psychosis? Do they think "causes psychosis" is an inherent property of some drugs, in which case why is it only this one drug that's causing the problems? Or does it mean "causes problems for people who are already crazy"? Is it wrong to use this drug for people with schizophrenia? Or is it only wrong to use this drug _for the first time_ for people with schizophrenia? If it's wrong only for people who have schizophrenia, that means that these drugs are being taken by all sorts of people with mental illnesses -- anxiety, depression, and PTSD. What do we do with all the people who are taking these drugs who weren't sick when they started them? Do they get to take them until their problems are over? Can they stop when the side effects start to be serious? (Remember that the side effects of these drugs are sometimes serious, but most people have serious side effects to drugs other than anti- psychotics.) So here we have a situation where the medications are not just approved, but actively promoted by the federal government. But yet some large percentage of the population doesn't think they should be in use, because they don't see their target population as deserving. But the other option is to let them take this risk and hope that nothing happens. ~~~ stretchwithme The risk is that these drugs have terrible side effects, with the ones that have killed so many people being among the ones promoted most strongly. What we need to do is allow people to make their own decisions, and stop making laws with the objective of using the laws themselves to push some political agenda that everyone has to follow. The idea is to help people help themselves. ------ kchoudhu We've seen this story before, about 20 years ago when "we" decided that people were basically addicts for life, and "drug rehab" was the only choice. We're now living with the results of that policy. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_rehabilitation_in_the_U.S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_rehabilitation_in_the_United_States#The_War_on_Drugs) ------ rdtsc I don't know about it specifically, but I see a trend in the direction of the society deciding to be more intolerant in general. So you can't offend people, and in addition you are required to be politically correct. If one did things in the past not according to the rules of politeness -- didn't say "God Bless you" when sneezed on, had an offensive or racist opinion, spoke ill of women or homosexuals. Would get in big trouble. The attitude was "just ignore it, it's a one off, someone will forget, and next time they'll be sure to behave correctly. Nowadays if you say something that doesn't fit the approved agenda, there will be repercussions. I remember the controversy about the TV show South Park. It is a cartoon comedy program in many ways similar to Family Guy, so what could be different. First of all it aired on Comedy Central, not Fox or a CBS or NBC affiliate. So, it is not protected by broadcasting guidelines and censorship and FCC rules. It had a skit where a character was trying to "convert" people to Mormonism, they wanted to baptize him. The Church of Latter Day Saints sued Comedy Central and got an injunction against the airing. Just the thought of South Park running on that network is now illegal. It has had a lot of skits in the past about topics that are considered taboo by liberals, conservatives or both. The show got in trouble for a skit about Jesus, which had a character saying "Let's just say his parents got tetragonaphobics" referencing mental disorders (tetrisphobia being apparently quite funny). Another skit had him dressed as the grim reaper and saying that if he had a day off he would "off" people. And now, he's suing Netflix over South Park. Now just saying in your mind that religious stuff might not be funny on a cartoon show is already in trouble. How is that a different than having to call some one a "jerkoff" and get arrested. Comedy Central, its parent company Viacom Inc, the writers and South Park’s distributor, had no comment on the legal action. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-south-park-netflix- lawsuit...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-south-park-netflix-lawsuit- idUSKCN1WI0Y9) We got to a point where you can't do anything without risking your business. Imagine the number of people in charge of content censorship in a company like Google, Facebook or Netflix. They are probably really good programmers that know their stuff and can sniff things out. How would you or I fare as a developer in that environment? ------ kwhitefoot No thanks. Give me my 20 years of neuroleptic medication. ------ sergers The side affects of antipsychotics in my case were terrifying. I ended up having to take Risperdol and Seroquel to combat the withdrawal symptoms.