Drug treatment

• Antipsychotics

  Medications used to control psychosis e.g delusions and hallucinations
• Typical antipsychotics


  Drug therapy used since 1950s (first generation)

  • less popular now as severe side effects and only treat positive symptoms
  • e.g chlorpromazine
  • work as dopamine antagonists - reduce dopamine activity by blocking dopamine receptors at the synapse
  • calms dopamine system in brain reducing positive symptoms
  • general sedative effect
• atypical antipsychotics 


  second generation

  • avoid more severe side effects
  • block dopamine receptors but also act on other neurotransmitters e.g acetylcholine and serotonin
  • also address negative symptoms
  • e.g clozapine
  • still have side effects e.g weight gain
• A03 - strengths of drug treatments 


  Supporting evidence:

  Leucht et al (2013)

  • meta-analysis of 212 studies
  • treatment of symptoms the antipsychotic drug treatment were found to be much more effective than placebo

  Baghall (2003)

  • meta-analysis on 232 studies
  • found atypical drugs were more effective than typical in treating overall symptoms and had fewer movement disorder side effects
  • clozapine found to be most effective for negative symptoms and treating people who were resistant to other drugs
  • suggests antipsychotics are an effective treatment plan Economy:
• A03 - limitations

  Tarrier (1998)

  • randomly placed patients into routine care (antipsychotics) or routine care and CBT
  • patients in combined treatment had significant improvement in severity and number of positive symptoms as well as fewer days in hospital receiving care
  • suggests drug therapy alone is not most effective treatment plan and an interactionalist approach to treating schizophrenia is a better option

  lack of evidence showing long term benefits:

  • most studies look at short term effects
  • therefore drug therapies may be suppressing symptoms not treating them
• Strength of drug therapies

  Often cheaper to prescribe than providing hospital treatment or psychological therapies such as CBT and family therapy