[Recent trends in pharmacotherapy of aggressive behavior in psychiatric patients]

Patients with recurrent pathologic aggressive behavior constitute a severe problem for psychiatric institutions. Besides of being dangerous towards others, these patients themselves suffer from a variety of negative consequences, such as the danger of long-term hospitalisation etc. Therefore, pharmacologic treatment in addition to psychotherapeutic and social interventions is not only ethically justified but mostly inevitable. This kind of combined treatment as a rather common procedure in psychiatric institutions leads time and again to fairly high doses of neuroleptics but not to satisfactory results. This article gives an overview of studies on the advantages and drawbacks of alternative substances: Benzodiazepines, beta-blockers, lithium salts, amine precursors and antiepileptics. Differential indications are described.