The so-called atypical antipsychotics are the pharmaceutical industry’s new SSRIs. In the 1990’s the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors came on the scene like an explosion. The hype was enough to convince almost anyone with depression to give the drugs a try. Prozac looked like the answer to all sadness: just take the pill and feel better. No need for therapy. No need to work on your attitude or lifestyle. No need to increase your tolerance for adverse moods. Just pop a pill and go on with your life.

Years later, we now know that the SSRIs do not exceed the older drugs in effectiveness. Compared with ‘tricyclics’ (the older antidepressants), drugs like Prozac have different side effects, but not fewer. Perhaps the only real advantage of SSRIs in treating depression is that they don’t kill you if you take too many. Tricyclics are notoriously lethal in overdose.

So the dust has settled, and SSRIs no longer look like wonder drugs. Worse (from the standpoint of the drug companies) most of the patents of the native SSRIs have expired (long acting preparations and other alterations may still be available only in branded forms). So the pharmaceutical industry needed to move on to something new.

Enter the ‘atypical antipsychotics’. They are ‘atypical’ because they work differently from the old antipsychotics. The old drugs were essentially dopamine blockers. The class had been discovered because of an herbal folk remedy for insanity, from which a very effective anti psychosis drug was isolated. It turned out that it worked by blocking the effects of dopamine in the body. This led to the ‘dopamine hypothesis’, where schizophrenia was postulated to be the result of excess dopamine. That idea turned out to be far too simplistic, but there is little doubt that dopamine is one of the neurotransmitters that goes awry in psychotic illnesses.

Atypicals, however, have less effect on dopamine than the older drugs, and more effect on serotonin and other neurotransmitters. (They also may be more discriminating in which of the body’s several types of dopamine receptors they target.) The prototype was clozapine (Clozaril), which had tremendous antipsychotic activity, but life-threatening side effects. Working from the structure of clozapine, researchers created the other atypical agents. These include: olanzapine (Zyprexa), quetiapine (Seroquel), ziprasidone (Geodon), aripiprazole (Abilify), and risperidone (Risperdal).

Unfortunately, I have taken all of them at one time or another. Oddly, although I have had one episode of psychosis, my psychiatrist at the time prescribed atypical antipsychotics long after the psychosis had resolved. That’s because the drug companies started promoting these agents for mood disorders. First they were proposed for manic symptoms, but eventually some of them were touted as effective agents for severe depression. They are being used more and more for such reasons.

When I took them, they mainly felt like strong sedatives. Sure, they helped with agitation. They made me feel like I’d been hit with a hammer.

Problem was, they had terrible side effects. Well-known problems include incredible weight gain, increased cholesterol, and diabetes. I got the first two, and was well on my way to the third by the time I finally quit the drugs. There are other side effects, it turns out, when these drugs are used in combination with different classes of psychiatric medications. I won’t go into detail right now, because I am still getting up the nerve to talk about how these drugs have harmed me: it is a very sensitive subject for me.

My point right now, however, is that these are toxic drugs. Their side effects are far more dangerous than, say, those of the SSRIs. Given the epidemic of obesity and ‘metabolic syndrome’ in this country, we really should question whether these drugs are being overused. Especially since the evidence for their effectiveness in many conditions is not all that convincing.

Addendum:
Here is a link to a good site to check out if you want to know more about the controversies surrounding atypical antipsychotics. I also just came across an article about the problems with big Pharma and atypicals (with reference to a recent major legal settlement involving Zyprexa) on HuffPost by Dr. LLoyd I. Sederer. My thanks to Liz Spikol for her The Trouble With Spikol blog post summarizing the article.