An essay on the use of new antipsychotics

Abstract

In a textbook of psychopharmacology published as recently as 1990, Hollister and Csernansky wrote about antipsychotics “It is most discouraging that more effective pharmacotherapy has not been developed. Present drugs have many deficiences: they are not curative; their ameliorative effects are often limited, many patients remain totally unresponsive; they are unpleasant to take so that many patients are less than fully compliant; they produce major side effects such as tardive dyskinesia whose full implications are still uncertain”.