While anti-psychotic, or more properly “neuroleptic” medications often appear to be helpful in the short term, they have never been proven to be helpful to long term recovery. In fact, there are lots of reasons to suspect that they actually make recovery less likely. There is the fact that overall recovery rates have gone down since they were introduced; the fact that recovery rates are about twice as good in developing countries where they are used less often; and the fact that in most long term studies, the people doing best have mostly all quit using medications. Now, an article is available that shows how even in the early days of the use of these medications, there were a few long term studies that showed that people who were given placebo did better than those given medication, when observed 1 year later! Yet, the researchers refused to see the results of their own studies, and failed to alert professionals and the public to this fact. You can read this article at http://psychrights.org/Research/Digest/Effective/MIrwinSxReversalNoDrugs.pdf
You might want to check out the psychrights website generally, it is loaded with articles on both the hazards of mental health treatment as usual, and helpful alternatives: PsychRights
