The newer, 'atypical' antipsychotic drugs--their development and current therapeutic use

General practitioners (GPs) need to become more aware of a new generation of antipsychotic drugs that are 'atypical' in that, unlike traditional neuroleptics, they do not cause extrapyramidal side-effects; they may also be more effective against both the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia by their actions on various neurotransmitter pathways in the brain. This is a non-systematic review of the development of these new drugs and outlines how they are currently being used. It includes information found from an electronic search of the databases MEDLINE (from 1966 to June 1998) and EMBASE (from 1980 to January 1998) using the combined search terms 'antipsychotic agents', 'atypical', and 'schizophrenia'.