B Vitamin Supplements in First-Episode Psychosis: Some Neurodevelopmental and Physiologic Context

Could an inexpensive, benign, and readily available intervention offer meaningful benefits for patients with serious mental illnesses (SMIs)? This question might be met with a reflexive skepticism among investigators in the field, for understandable reasons. Despite decades of research, standard drug therapies for schizophrenia and other SMIs remain inadequate, and simple remedies for such biologically complex disorders might seem implausible. Further, because our most ill patients often require some of the most toxic interventions in our arsenal (e.g., clozapine, lithium, or monoamine oxidase inhibitors), we may be conditioned to think, as through an algebraic property, that benign interventions will be the least effective.
Source: Biological Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Commentary Source Type: research