Allowing patients with a first episode to experience a second is unacceptable, Henry A. Nasrallah, MD, editor in chief of Current Psychiatry, said in his interview with Lorenzo Norris, MD, editor in chief of MDedge Psychiatry.
“It’s not too late to use injectables after the first episode, but my God, why are we letting them lose so much tissue and have so much suffering, so much PTSD, so much stigma, so much poverty, so much incarceration that comes from having repetitive psychotic episodes and deteriorating?” Dr. Nasrallah asked. “We can prevent all of that by utilizing, exploiting those agents.”
Dr. Nasrallah serves as a consultant and on the advisory boards of several companies, including Acadia, Alkermes, Allergan, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Janssen, Lundbeck, Neurocrine, Otsuka, Sunovion, and Teva. He also serves on the speakers bureaus of several companies. Dr. Norris has no disclosures.