A study appearing in Psychiatric Services describes a hike in prescribing antipsychotic medications over a ten-year period at the Veterans Administration. Sixty percent of antipsychotic drugs were prescribed off-label for patients with a diagnosis other than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The authors were cautious, noting:
The benefits of such off-label use are usually unclear because there has not been a high level of published clinical research evaluating the safety and efficacy of these drugs for non-FDA-approved indications. Although some off-label use of second-generation antipsychotics may be appropriate, these drugs are expensive and have serious side effects (including weight gain, diabetes mellitus, tardive dyskinesia, and extrapyramidal symptoms), and their off-label use may therefore represent significant risk and cost with undemonstrated clinical benefit and potential harm.
These findings follow the recently published report in Archives of General Psychiatry show similar hikes in the use of antidepressants, making them the "most commonly prescribed class of medications in the United States."
