Allowing someone with schizophrenia to remain in a psychotic state is cruel and harmful to the person, but that is what happened in a recent drug trial. But that is what happened in a trial conducted by Otsuka Pharmaceutical and Lundbeck Pharmaceutical to gain approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. earlier this year.

When people suffering from mental illness receive intensive treatment in programs specifically designed for them, most of them do much better. Anti-psychotic medications are understood to provide the foundation upon which any other treatments can be added. These messages are in direct conflict with the message from journalist Robert Whitaker. Robert Whitaker does excellent work describing the egregious practices of the pharmaceutical industries. However, his extreme stance against the value of psychotropic medications is scary. Any parents of a psychotic son or daughter who heard his recent presentation in Vancouver would want to keep their child far away from the early psychosis intervention programs that offer the best hope for recovery.

In Robert Whitaker's book, The Anatomy of an Epidemic, his main conclusion is that antipsychotic medications are bad. He argues that the outcomes for schizophrenia recovery rates have worsened with the introduction of medication. But a very recent study done by the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, just concluded that the benefit of these drugs has been proven.