New Antipsychotics

According to the OMS, last October 10th was International Day of Mental Health, that's when we discuss topics regarding mental illness such as depression, anxiety, bipolarity and schizophrenia.

"The Madman's Tale by John Katzenbach"

These are diseases that deeply affect the life of the ones who suffer from them, including symptoms like abnormal thoughts, emotions and behaviors that difficult the relationship with the environment, reality, their relationship with people and themselves. 

Despite the high amount of mental diseased people in the world, we still have to face an incredible amount of stigma and prejudice when it comes to discuss the issue. Since they originate in the mind, sometimes is hard to understand what's going for people from the outside. But it all have its root in the biochemical balance of the brain.

The treatment for them consist in a combination of psychotherapy and medicine, but we still have a long way until we can produce satisfying results that really help to improve people's quality of life. Most of medicines for mental illness, called psychotropic drugs, barely manage to reduce the symptoms and produce a lot of problematic side effects.

For example, antipsychotics, the drugs used to treat psychosis and bipolar disorders, consist in chemical molecules that decrease the action of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the central nervous system. Normally, this neurotransmitter is responsible of motivation, pleasure, memory, attention, etc. But when in higher concentrations than usual, in specific areas of brain, it can cause psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia. 

However, it is very complicated to reduce dopamine only in some areas and not others. This means that antipsychotics keep under control the  "typical" or "positive" symptoms of schizophrenia, like hallucinations and delusions, but on the other hand, most of them fail with other issues like affective dullness, slow thinking, lack of motivation and incapacity to maintain habits. Meanwhile, the side effects include sedation, which can cause toubles for working and studying, nausea, sexual disfunction... sometimes, to fight this side effects they take more pills with their own side effects.
Peopel with this diseases fill they are trapped between two nightmares.
Becauseof al this, farmaceuticals have the must to find different options for treatments that accomplish more specific targets in the brain, or at least have more manageeable side effects so we can actually talk about an imporve in the patient's life, and not only make them less dangerouse for society.

Some New Antipsychotics approved by FDA in 2017

Las year, some of the new antipsychotics were approved by FDA. They allow wider intervals of administrations, which leads to less intense side effects with a better improvement on the patient's social integration