How Risky Are Psychiatric Medications?

About 12% of the U.S. population takes prescription psychiatric medications, but the comparative risks for nonintentional adverse drug reactions (ADRs) for each drug class have been little studied. To learn more, researchers examined 3 years of electronic records of adult visits to emergency departments (EDs) at 63 hospitals.

Of 89,094 ED visits for psychiatric ADRs (about 10% of all ADR visits to EDs), almost 20% resulted in hospitalization. The highest rate of ED visits relative to the number of outpatient presumed prescriptions was found for antipsychotics (especially, typical antipsychotics), primarily for severe extrapyramidal effects, and lithium, with the most common problems being “abnormal drug level,” altered mental status, and mov…