Antipsychotics and their discontents

PsyDactic

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Frequently I have complained that the terms "typical and atypical" or "first generation and second generation" antipsychotics were not very helpful. When I give chalk talks to junior residents and interns about antipsychotics, this is one of the first things that I note. It is the medicines relative affinities for different receptors that appear to make the difference, not whether they were discovered prior to 1980 or not. A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to encounter a paper that was published in April of 2023 by McCutcheon et al in Biological Psychiatry titled "Data-Driven Taxonomy for Antipsychotic Medication: A New Classification System." In this episode, I use their results to guide a discussion of variability in target effects and side effects of different groups of antipsychotics.

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