Are you sure your Prescribed Anti-psychotic Medication is the Best Medicine?

Medical News Today recently published an article on March 22nd, 2012, which was revealed in PLoS Medicine that tested the effect of medical journals on the perception of 2nd generation anti-psychotic drugs by psychiatrists. The researchers believed that the medical journals were embellishing the effectiveness of these new drugs, thereby influencing the psychiatrists to prescribe them more often. According to their research, their results were very similar to their previous thoughts:

• Out of 24 FDA-registered pre-marketing trials for 8 second generation anti-psychotics, 4 displayed negative pre-marketing trial results and were never published
• Additionally, one was statistically inferior to its competitor drugs, yet the medical journal did not print this information in the article
• Above all, 3 pre-marking trials were not tested to be more beneficial than even a placebo medication

Lesson of the article: You may want to look into the trial results of your anti-psychotic medication to make sure you are prescribed the best medicine