Interpreting Harrow’s 20-Year Results: Are the Drugs to Blame?

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Robert Whitaker

Of all the research that has been done in the past 20 years on psychotic disorders, Martin Harrow’s ongoing study of long-term outcomes in such patients is, in my opinion, the most important work. He and his colleagues have now published their 20-year results. Given the 15-year outcomes data he published in 2007, his latest findings should not be surprising. The schizophrenia and schizoaffective patients who took antipsychotics regularly during the 20 years, compared to those who quit taking the medications (usually within the first two years), experienced more psychosis, more anxiety, and markedly fewer periods of “sustained recovery.” They were also more cognitively impaired.