ABSTRACT
The treatment of schizophrenia is not restricted to drug interventions, which should always be supported by psychological and social interventions, carefully planned for the individual patient. The atypical antipsychotics are no more effective in treating positive symptoms but are better tolerated because of their lower tendency to cause distressing neuromuscular side-effects. The dopamine theory of schizophrenia rests mainly on indirect evidence that schizophrenic patients have more than double the normal concentration of dopamine in several brain nuclei, such as the amygdala, which, in animals, appear to be the centres responsible for rage and aggression. Drug classification of antipsychotics is about as vague as a classification could be. It amounts to 'old drugs' and 'new drugs', usually referred to as 'classical/typical' and 'atypical'. The 'classical' group are subdivided into five groups, the members of each being chemically similar. These are phenothiazines, butyrophenones, diphenylbutylpiperidines, thioxanthenes, and substituted benzamides.
