Risperidone as an effective choice for obsessive-compulsive symptoms and tardive dyskinesia in an Indian...

Tardive dyskinesia (TD) is a chronic, stigmatizing side effect of typical and atypical antipsychotics that is often debilitating for the patient and resistant to treatment. Obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) may arise at any stage of schizophrenia ranging from prodrome to posttreatment and carry a poor prognosis. Management of both the conditions is a challenging and often fatiguing task for the treating physician. We report a case of schizo-obsessive disorder in an Indian quadragenarian who had developed TD with olanzapine and had failed to show improvement with clozapine and quetiapine. The patient improved dramatically with risperidone. Our findings corroborate with previous literature which has shown risperidone to be effective in treatment of TD and obsessive symptoms, possibly due to its action on the serotonergic system. The authors conclude that risperidone is an effective choice to treat TD and comorbid OCS in patients with schizophrenia.