“There are many hazards with pre-emptive medical interventions, especially with such potent drugs as antipsychotics (which have been described as possibly the second most toxic chemicals used in medicine after the drugs used in chemotherapy)….” – David Webb, board member of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and Melissa Raven, psychiatric epidemiologist and policy analyst
CCHR hopes study will put an end to the psychiatric practice of pre-drugging children with powerful psychotropic drugs to prevent the possible onset of a behavioral disorder. Experts condemn the practice as unscientific and harmful.
By Jan Eastgate
President CCHR International
The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
July 21, 2020
A new study has found prescribing antipsychotics to prevent psychosis is harmful and should put this practice to rest. For a decade CCHR has opposed “pre-drugging” youths and adults to theoretically prevent the onset of behavioral disorders. Researchers of the new study published in the July edition of the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, vindicates CCHR’s concerns. Researchers investigated whether antipsychotics might prevent “conversion to psychosis” in people who were identified as at “clinical high risk (CHR)” of it. However, they concluded: “Administration of antipsychotics to CHR patients is potentially harmful with no preventive benefits. We do not recommend antipsychotic treatment for CHR individuals….”[1]
The researchers found subjects consistently became psychotic in those taking antipsychotics, who had multiple prescriptions, and who took a higher dose of an antipsychotic. The study is even more damning because the subjects were drug naive—they weren’t influenced by other psychotropics that may have been stopped to commence the study. None of the participants had ever received a previous psychiatric drug. Many different antipsychotics were used, including aripiprazole, olanzapine, risperidone, amisulpride, and quetiapine. The researchers wrote that their “results did not favor any specific type of antipsychotics.
“There are many hazards with pre-emptive medical interventions, especially with such potent drugs as antipsychotics (which have been described as possibly the second most toxic chemicals used in medicine after the drugs used in chemotherapy)….” – David Webb, board member of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and Melissa Raven, psychiatric epidemiologist and policy analyst