Drugs used in Schizophrenia: A Literature Review

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that alters a person’s way of thinking, feeling, and relating to the world, usually in a way that makes them appear to have lost contact with reality. This paper gives an overview of this intricate illness. We examine the three primary categories of symptoms: psychotic symptoms (such as hallucinations or delusions), negative symptoms (such as lack of motivation or emotion), and cognitive symptoms (which include difficulties in memory and attention). The review also briefly addresses the causes, with reference to genetics and brain structure, specifically imbalances in neurotransmitters such as dopamine. We discuss how clinicians come to diagnose the condition based on criteria from such guides as the DSM-5-TR and medical tests to exclude other problems. Treatment is the main emphasis, however. Schizophrenia treatment involves both medication and therapy. We outline the medications, with second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) being the first-line treatment of choice because they produce fewer movement side effects than older medications, although they are associated with metabolic side effects. The review finishes outlining five specific antipsychotic medications—such as Clozapine, Risperidone, Haloperidol, describing how they act, what they are licensed to treat, and what the most common side effects are.