The six-month randomized, controlled trial found that the antipsychotic medication risperidone worked no better than a placebo in alleviating typical PTSD symptoms in patients who had been suffering from the disorder long-term or who continued to suffer symptoms after being treated with antidepressants.
The medication also failed to quell depression and anxiety, researchers reported today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“PTSD is the most common — and most costly to treat — disorder seen by the VA psychiatry services,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. John H. Krystal, professor and chair of the department of psychiatry at Yale University and director of the clinical neuroscience division of the Veterans Administration National Center for PTSD. “It’s a huge problem.”
Standard treatments, including antidepressants like Zoloft and Paxil, help a lot of people with the disorder. But studies have suggested that these drugs don’t work so well for people who have had multiple traumas or chronic PTSD, Krystal said. So doctors have turned to alternative medications like risperidone to add to antidepressant therapies.
Risperidone is an antipsychotic medication used to treat mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and irritability associated with autism disorder. In 2009, nearly 87,000 veterans diagnosed with PTSD received an antipsychotic prescription, with nearly 94 percent of them for second-generation antipsychotics such as risperidone.
Click to expand...