Antipsychotics are medicinal agents used for the treatment of psychosis. The term psychosis is used to indicate conditions that distress the mind and in which an individual loses touch with reality, experiences delusions in the form of fixated and false beliefs, or hallucinations in which a person sees or hears things not actually present. Psychosis could also manifest as a physical symptom of substance abuse or a mental illness like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or a very serious form of depression known as psychotic depression.
Oftentimes, antipsychotics are used in combination with other medicinal agents for treating conditions like dementia, delirium, ADHD, severe depression, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and GAD. These conditions are not cured by antipsychotics, rather, the latter is used to alleviate symptoms and improve the overall quality of life of an individual battling one of these disorders.
Antipsychotics are majorly of two types. First is the conventional or older antipsychotics were referred to as first-generation antipsychotics, neuroleptics, or typical antipsychotics. Examples of these include chlorpromazine, haloperidol, perphenazine, and fluphenazine. Second generation or newer antipsychotics, also known as atypical antipsychotics, include risperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine, ziprasidone, aripiprazole, paliperidone, and lurasidone.
Both atypical and typical antipsychotics are used for treating the symptoms of manic episodes of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. In addition, multiple atypical antipsychotics possess a broad spectrum of action in comparison to conservative medicines, and thus are used for managing bipolar depression and depression which is unresponsive to antidepressants alone.