ReviewCNS spectrums2025
Do antipsychotics work in people with schizophrenia? A review of outcomes and effect sizes.
Review in CNS spectrums, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- A cross-sectional study on social functioning and its associated factors among patients with severe mental illness in Minhang District, Shanghai.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Medications for psychosis in people with schizophrenia: what happens if you take them and what happens if you don't?CNS spectrums · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe origins and treatment-target-related mechanisms of schizophrenia remain to be fully understood. Pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments require expansion and improvements to meet peoples' needs and goals. Nevertheless, antipsychotics are a cornerstone when managing schizophrenia, being essential for reducing symptom severity, preventing relapse, improving long-term functional outcomes, and reducing premature mortality risk.
methodsThis narrative review synthesizes key evidence on the efficacy and risks associated with antipsychotic medications. The concept of effect sizes is introduced, allowing to compare antipsychotics across trials with different rating instruments and across different conditions.
resultsThe available evidence in schizophrenia and comparison with medications used for medical conditions counters the sometimes-voiced criticism that antipsychotics "do not work." Instead, for a substantial group of people with schizophrenia, positive psychotic symptoms and global psychopathology improve witha small-medium effect size of about 0.4 versus placebo. These results are comparable to median effect sizes across commonly used medications for somatic disorders. When patients with initial response are continued on antipsychotics, the effect size increases to 0.9 for relapse prevention, translating into a number needed to treat (NNT) of about 3 to prevent one more relapse versus no treatment. This NNT is 10-20 times higher than that for the prevention of poor outcomes in some common medical conditions.
conclusionsDespite general efficacy and effectiveness of antipsychotics for schizophrenia, further development is needed regarding preventive interventions and medications with mechanisms other than postsynaptic dopamine receptor blockade, with broader efficacy for positive, negative, cognitive, suicidality, and/or reward dysregulation symptomatology, and the identification of illness mechanism/biomarker-targeting treatments to enhance treatment personalization.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.