Recovery from "schizophrenia" and other "psychotic disorders"

In the attempt to convince people to take medications, the hazards of such medications are often minimized or overlooked. While many people may truly be better off taking some medications, at least for awhile, the danger in hiding the hazards of the drugs is that rational decisions about how long to stay on medications, at what dosage, and how hard to try to find alternatives, become impossible. Instead, an illusion is created that the only rational approach is to stay on medications indefinitely, because only an irrational person would risk the return of a destructive psychosis.

If we really allowed ourselves to face all the facts however, we would see that these decisions are much more complex. For example, while the effects of being caught up in psychosis can be terrible, the effects of the antipsychotic medications can be terrible as well. These medications significantly increase the risk of death, due to causing things like heart problems, metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes etc. And, while most of psychiatry is still in denial about it, it appears that antipsychotic medications have a tendency to shrink brains. (For those of you unfamiliar with the evidence for this effect, I include some references and other information at the end of this post.)

Some people might think that if antipsychotic medications will shrink the consumer’s brain and then possibly kill them, then the obvious decision is to just get off the medications as quickly as possible. However, the problem is that it appears that uncontrolled psychosis, and its associated distress, will also shrink a person’s brain and very possibly kill them (besides making a total mess of their life in other ways.) More »