Risperidone - PTSD and Our Drugged Society

We Loves Our Drugs, even giving to kids who are being kids as we tell them say 'no', some here supply guns and ammo to the Mexican drug war for the money and for the drugs, that long before the FBI tried their sting, and now as we send soldiers over and over into two combat occupations and pack some up with drugs trying to ease the damage already done. That damage comes from living in a new world reality from the one taught from childhood should be but isn't, witnessing or even just knowing what's happening, just ask those who live through extreme traumatic events in their lives, even only once, and war theaters are what they are 'hells on earth' for the soldier and the civilian populations living in them. Drugs may ease symptoms, like letting one sleep, but soldiers sent back into a theater should never be dependent on drugs to live through their present tour, never!

Widely used PTSD drug fails test in combat veterans

Risperidone worked no better than placebo in easing overall symptoms, study finds

8/2/2011 - A medication commonly used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans may not be effective in reducing overall PTSD severity, a new study shows.

The six-month randomized, controlled trial found that the antipsychotic medication risperidone worked no better than a placebo in alleviating typical PTSD symptoms in patients who had been suffering from the disorder long-term or who continued to suffer symptoms after being treated with antidepressants.

The medication also failed to quell depression and anxiety, researchers reported today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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“PTSD is the most common — and most costly to treat — disorder seen by the VA psychiatry services,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. John H. Krystal, professor and chair of the department of psychiatry at Yale University and director of the clinical neuroscience division of the Veterans Administration National Center for PTSD. “It’s a huge problem.”

Standard treatments, including antidepressants like Zoloft and Paxil, help a lot of people with the disorder. But studies have suggested that these drugs don’t work so well for people who have had multiple traumas or chronic PTSD, Krystal said. So doctors have turned to alternative medications like risperidone to add to antidepressant therapies.

Risperidone is an antipsychotic medication used to treat mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and irritability associated with autism disorder. In 2009, nearly 87,000 veterans diagnosed with PTSD received an antipsychotic prescription, with nearly 94 percent of them for second-generation antipsychotics such as risperidone.

Krystal and others suspect that the new findings will affect the prescribing habits of doctors trying to help patients suffering from PTSD. read more>>>