If you or your service users want to know more about antipsychotics in general, the different families of antipsychotics, or individual drugs, you will find a resource to fit the need here. Level of detail ranges from lay-person to pharmacist-appropriate.
Coming soon for students: There will suggested activities for every stage of your training.
General and Quick Fact Sheets
Antipsychotic Factsheet from Rethink Mental Illness
Pdf document written in lay-terms. Good to hand on to service users and is easy to understand.
Covers typicals and atypicals, and gives examples of these.
The highlight for nurses here is a very straightforward table of likely side-effects for all antipsychotics (Pg 6)
Royal College of Psychiatrists: Antipsychotics Information Leaflet
Another good source of general information for nurses and service users.
More information here on usual dose ranges and a good section on depot injections.
Depot Injections
Guidance on the Administration to Adults of Oil-based Depot and other Long-Acting Intramuscular Antipsychotic Injections (6th Ed.)
The definitive and must-have source of information for UK nurses about long-acting depot injections. It’s a lengthy document, but covers everything nurses need to know: from a comprehensive coverage of atypical antipsychotics available in depot form, to standard operating procedures of administration to all intramuscular sites.
Reach 4 Resource (R4R)
To accompany the pdf document above, the University of Hull has put together a set of free interactive and multimedia-based learning resources. Well-worth a look, especially if you favour a more active approach to learning. If you register with the site and complete their online short course, you can even get a certificate of training as proof of continual professional development… Great for NMC revalidation!
More Detailed, Specific Information
Mind
For: General public & nurses
It has a number of very good resources relating to antidepressants. Below are three of the stand-out sections.Number of very useful resources relating to antipsychotics. Below are four of the stand-out sections.
- An A-Z of individual antipsychotics. Each entry contains a surprising amount of information, including common side-effects, drug half-life, drug-drug interactions, and potential withdrawal effects.
- Antipsychotics explained. This page includes what it’s like to take them, the issue of informed consent, a brief explanation of first and second generation families, and a brief explanation of their mechanism of action.
- Antipsychotics’ Side-Effects. A thorough coverage of different adverse effects. However detail here has been sacrificed for bredth. If you need detailed information about serious side-effects, please see the Life-threatening Adverse Effects of Antipsychotics post.
- Antiparkinson drugs. Good information on procyclidine, orphenadrine and trihexyphenidyl.
British National Formulary: Psychoses and related disorders
For: Nurses, Drs & pharmacists
You’ll all be aware of the BNF, but it’s useful to know there is a freely available electronc version in the UK.
Comprehensive, medical terminology about individual drugs.
Valuable information about the families of drugs at the top of every chapter.
Medscape: Psychiatrics
For: Nurses & Drs
Search or browse for information about particular drugs.
Advantages: has easy-to-find, concise and well-categorised information on individual drugs’ pharmacology and drug-drug interactions.
Disadvantages: Doesn’t give information about families of drugs like the BNF does.
Caution: American-based website, so some protocols will differ.
Electronic Medicines Compendium (eMC)
For: Nurses, Drs & pharmacists
Advantages: UK-based medicines search engine. It has a database of all patient information leaflets. It also has a database of Summary of Product Characteristics (basically all the information about a drug that anyone could ever wish to know!). This even includes intricate details of drugs’ pharmacokinetic properties.
Disadvantages: With separate information available for every different dose of a drug, it can be difficult to navigate initially.