You Ever Been to a Psychotic?

Sounds like the disease from hell - half the untreated schizophrenics feel so miserable they attempt to commit suicide. The "treated" ones ended up either with (irreversible) tardive dyskinesia (1st generation antipsychotic medications) or with morbid obesity (2nd generation medications). I wonder if schizophrenia is really so common that (2nd gen.) Zyprexa should be among the top 5 most-prescribed drugs in the world; that includes prescriptions to children as young as 2. If you're interested in the "cultural adaptation" aspect read what patients on that medication wrote:
http://www.askapatient.com/viewrating.asp?drug=20592&name=ZYPREXA&sort=timelength&page=2

The white dots were real dots. The black dots that twinkle were illusionary.

It shouldn't change how you think about mental illness, because all optical illusions are traceable to evolutionary survival. Our distant ancestors, tiny mammals living on trees, knew to get out of the way quickly whenever some brontosaurus appeared over the distant horizon; a creature of the same apparent size straight overhead was probably nothing to worry about. To this day we all see the moon rising over the horizon as being bigger than the moon straight overhead - it's an illusion that has nothing to do with perspective, as even pilots at high altitudes are subject to it. Any human brain that sees the moon as a camera does has something wrong with it - even though it correctly perceives the actual truth.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/20jun_moonillusion/

Correction: antipsychotic drugs are now being prescribed to babies only a few months old - far too young for a schizophrenia diagnosis:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html?src=busln

I know a 7 year old who is on Risperdol. Scary stuff. I was in the school office one day and a classmate of Mo's came in for his medicine. They pulled out a bag containing at least 6 bottles. If this is what he had to take at school during the day you really have to wonder how much the kid was taking overall.

The comments on that article were interesting -- they are exactly what I was talking about on my thread about taking someone off medication -- that bad parenting is what leads to having kids take medications.

Speaking for parents like myself: We don't expect a "fix" and we don't want a "quick fix", we want answers and we want help in learning to handle behavior that is not "normal" behavior.

Risperdal came off patent protection in 2007, its successor drug did the same in April 2010. Strangely enough, the dire side effects of that drug were only disclosed by its manufacturer after all patents expired - happens all the time to all drug companies. And in case you hoped for expert diagnosticians to advise: on average, 90% of all members of the panel writing the new DSM (diagnostic manual for psychiatric illnesses) are also consultants to pharmaceutical companies, with one member simultaneously advising no fewer than 13 such companies. It's good business for consulting psychiatrists and drug manufacturers - perhaps less so for patients and their families. Sorry I have no better answer for you Boomerang