Are Nonpsychiatric Medications Useful for Psychiatric Disorders?

Medical comorbidity is the rule in serious mental illness (SMI) such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other nonaffective psychoses. To examine how treatment of medical disorders affects psychiatric patients, researchers conducted a database study of all 142,691 patients in Sweden who had an SMI diagnosis and were treated with an antipsychotic, lithium, or anticonvulsant for ≥6 months over a 10-year period. In intraindividual analyses, rates of psychiatric hospitalization and suicidal or undetermined self-harm were compared when patients were or were not taking a statin, a calcium channel blocker (CCB), or metformin. As discussed below, these medications were chosen because they have theoretical connections to having psychotropic bene…