Posted by med_empowered on February 27, 2005, at 23:40:08
In reply to Is Thorazine really that bad?, posted by Dinah on February 27, 2005, at 19:41:34
hey! I'm definitely not a pro-neuroleptic person, especially with old ones like Thorazine..that said, I don't think you should be too worried. Thorazine was the first FDA-approved neuroleptic, but it had all kinds of "off-label" uses, such as a treatment for "psychoneurosis". This was true of all other antipsychotics available at the time, as well. What varied most from off-label applications to use in Schizophrenia was DOSAGE, especially in the US. In Europe, doctors generally tried to find the smallest effective dose, so the literature has reports of success in using 100mgs or a couple hundred mgs successfully. In the US, psychiatrists seem to have been reckless. Prominent shrinks called for doses of 1,500mgs, 2,000mgs, doses much higher than those supported by peer-reviewed data. This applied to Thorazine AND other neuroleptics, such as Haldol. Result: while tardive dyskinesia and other problems with neuroleptics were and are reported internationally, it would seem that the US had more problems than the Europeans. Long story short: while I think your docs should have RX'd something with fewer side-effects, like Valium (yes, there's a slight dependency issue, but it seems a small one), I seriously doubt your small doses of Thorazine have caused any major, irreparable harm to you. Good luck!
poster:med_empowered
thread:464204
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050227/msgs/464268.html