Antipsychotics for delirium in palliative care: new RCT suggests non-drug alternatives are needed

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Samei Huda highlights a recent RCT of antipsychotics (risperidone and haloperidol) versus placebo for symptoms of delirium in palliative care, which suggests we need non-drug alternatives for this group of patients.

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Risperidone versus placebo for people with schizophrenia

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Joanne Wallace summarises the recent Cochrane systematic review on risperidone versus placebo for schizophrenia, which concludes that the best available evidence does not show that the benefits of risperidone outweigh the harms.

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Antipsychotic efficacy measured by real-world observational study

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Tracey Roberts examines whether a retrospective observational study accurately investigates the effectiveness of second and first generation antipsychotics.

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Depot antipsychotics: If you pay me, you can keep injecting me

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John Baker looks at the 2-year follow-up results of a cluster RCT on the effectiveness of financial incentives to improve adherence to maintenance treatment with depot antipsychotics.

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Bipolar disorder in older men linked to increased risk of dementia

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Elena Marcus presents a recent study that shows how older Australian men with bipolar disorder have an increased risk of dementia and early death.

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The side-effects of antipsychotics: let’s systematically assess, discuss and act! #NPNR2016

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A live blog published at the 22nd International Network for Psychiatric Nursing Research conference in Nottingham.

Written by John Baker, Lucy Brazener, Wendy Cross, Vanessa Garrity, Andrew Grundy, Cher Hallett, Ben Hannigan, Elaine Hanzak and Alan Simpson.

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It’s a jungle out there: the natural history of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia

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Caroline Struthers scrutinises a systematic review on the longitudinal course of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia.

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Schizophrenia, antipsychotics and quality of life: measuring the important things

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Samei Huda mulls over a recent RCT on the effects of older and newer antipsychotics on quality of life in schizophrenia. The study finds a different result to the 10-year old CUTLASS trial; namely that second generation antipsychotics may be superior to first generation antipsychotics in terms of improving quality of life for people with schizophrenia.

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Adding antidepressants to antipsychotics in schizophrenia: do they work, for what, and are they safe?

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Alex Langford explores the emerging findings from a recent meta-analysis looking at the efficacy and safety of antidepressants added to antipsychotics for people with schizophrenia and schizophrenia-like psychosis.

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ITI-007 for schizophrenia

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Murtada Alsaif summarises a recent 4-week long phase II randomised controlled trial of ITI-007 for the treatment of schizophrenia, which contains some positive results for this novel intervention.

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