So antipsychotic medications can be considered as the medications used to treat psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, schizophreniform disorder, brief psychotic disorder, delusional disorder, shared psychotic disorder, substance induced psychotic disorder, psychotic disorder due to medical condition, paraphrenia. All these disorders affect the human mind. Affected people will have trouble thinking clearly, making decisions, communicating, behaving properly etc. They will have trouble facing the reality but all psychotic disorders are treatable.
The first step in the treatment is antipsychotic medication. Antipsychotic medications list had only a few antipsychotics back in the 50’s. The first antipsychotic ever discovered was chlorpromazine. By a French psychiatrist Pierre Deniker back in 1952. Back then it was considered as a wonder drug because of its capability to cure people affected by schizophrenia. We all know that how insulin helps diabetic patients, an antipsychotic medication does the same to psychotic disorders. There are side effects for these drugs and another serious problem is the overuse of these drugs especially by children.
Coming to the antipsychotic medications list, they can be classified into two and they are Typical and atypical antipsychotics. Typical is considered as the first generation antipsychotics. They have many side effects but are inexpensive and still widely used. Some typical antipsychotics are chlorpromazine, haloperidol, mesoridazine, perphenazine, trifluopeazine, thioridazine, loxapine, thiothixene, fluphenazine, molidone.
Atypical antipsychotics have lesser side effects when compared with typical and some of the effects are weight gain, metabolic syndrome etc. They are considered as second generation antipsychotic medications. Even though they are expensive, they are widely used. Some of them are ziprazodone, risperdone, olanzapine, aripiprazole, quetiapine.