(See also these related articles from CCHR International:)
PSYCHMINDED.CO.UK
EXCLUSIVE
July 7, 2010
by Angela Hussain
Anti-psychotic drugs are likely to cause brain damage, according to a new study.
The results challenge the widely-held view that schizophrenia itself causes brain structural changes, such as less brain grey matter, bigger ventricles and larger cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) spaces, claim researchers.
The results are published in an edition earlier this year of the Psychological Medicine journal.
Researchers reviewed magnetic resonance imaging studies which had examined brain changes in patients on anti-psychotics and those of patients not on the drugs.
More than half (14) of 26 studies showed that the brains of patients on anti-psychotics had shrunk.
Of the 21 studies of patients not on anti-psychotics, five suggested brain size decreases. But no differences were reported in three studies of non-drug (known as ‘drug-naïve’) patients who had been ill for a long time.
The results are “remarkable”, claim the study’s researchers, because they contradict research purporting to rule out anti-psychotic drug-induced effects on brain size.”
Most studies of drug-naïve patients did not report or detect differences in total brain volume, global grey matter or CSF volumes between patients and controls, including three studies of untreated patients with long-term illness,” stated the researchers, including Dr Joanne Moncrieff, of the Department of Mental Health Sciences, University College London.
Up to now few studies have investigated primarily the effects of anti-psychotic treatment on brain structure.
“Overall there seems to be enough evidence to suggest that antipsychotic drug treatment may play a role in reducing brain volume and increasing CSF or ventricular spaces,” the researchers wrote. Further research is urgently required, stated the paper, entitled A Systematic Review of the Effects of Antipsychotic Drugs on Brain Volume.
Read the rest of the article here: http://psychminded.co.uk/news/news2010/july10/Anti-psychotics-likely-to-cause-brain-damage001.html
Note from CCHR: The importance of this study cannot be stated strongly enough, given the world-wide current push from the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industries for pre-diagnosing patients, including infants and children, using faulty and misleading research to try and validate schizophrenia as a brain abnormality or disease (which has never been proven) in order to push a pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging agenda. See these articles for more information;