In a recent interview, Nancy Andreasen, former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry, reaffirmed her earlier findings that antipsychotics shrink brain tissue. “We spent a couple of years analyzing the data more or less hoping we had made a mistake,” she said, in an article that has been posted in PsychCentral and Science Daily. “But in the end, it was a solid finding that wasn’t going to go away, so we decided to go ahead and publish it. The impact is painful because psychiatrists, patients, and family members don’t know how to interpret this finding. ‘Should we stop using antipsychotic medication? Should we be using less?’” While concluding that antipsychotics may still be helpful, Andreasen conceded that “antipsychotic treatment has a negative impact on the brain.”

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Of further interest:

Relapse Duration, Treatment Intensity, and Brain Tissue Loss in Schizophrenia: A Prospective Longitudinal MRI Study (American Journal of Psychiatry)

Loss of Brain Tissue in Schizophrenia Tied to Antipsychotics (PsychCentral)

How Schizophrenia Affects the Brain (Science Daily)